How Many Get Away With It
I was asked a little while ago, if the murderers in my Jack of All Trades series always got caught. And my answer was: No. At the end of the book, the reader always knows who did it, but the murderer may evade justice. For this piece I have done the macabre exercise of counting the bodies.
In the seven currently published books of the series (Jack of All Trades, Jack of Spades, Jack o’Lantern, Jack by the Hedge, Jack in the Box, Jack on the Tower, and Jack Recalled) there are 10 murders in all. I am not counting the killings for self defence. Three of these murders are unsolved by the police. One was committed by three people, another by two, and a third by a single person. So six murderers get away with it. That’s a shockingly high count. Two of the victims though are thoroughly nasty people, so I believe readers will hope the murderers get off. The remaining one has not this let-off. The murdered person is not particularly bad. All I can say in its justification is that it is a clever murder, fooling the cops.
But not Jack.
The reader though is not left in the dark. That would be bad faith on my part. The reader expects to know who dunnit. And I will deliver. But stories often have a curious morality. In a cowboy movie, say, the goody shoots the baddy and we all cheer. Or take Robin Hood; he must have killed innocents galore, with all those flying arrows, in his philanthropic robbing of the rich to give to the poor. But then he’s a hard done by, good looking guy, and the King pardons him. So we are on his side.
Easy when it’s a myth.
In real life, I want murderers to get caught and to be punished, though there are a few cases that test this certainty. For example, take a woman who is battered by her husband for 15 years; one night she can’t take it anymore and kills him. There have been a few such cases in the last decades. By the letter of the law, in the UK, she would get at least 10 years in jail as that is the minimum sentence for murder. A good lawyer might get her off on self-defence, working on the jury’s sympathy. Though, if she has a poor lawyer she is likely to do the time.
In a crime novel, the writer can choose whether to let a murderer go free. That’s the theory, but in practice it is not so simple, as the writer has to satisfy the reader and come up with an ending that works.
In my three unsolved murders, in two of them, as I have said, a wicked person is killed. So in those cases rough justice is satisfied. In the third, I can’t claim that. Nor can I say too much without spoilers, but simply say real life is messy. We don’t live within the genre of cozy mysteries, where all murderers get caught. In the mean streets, some murders get away with it and the wrong person may be tried and sentenced.
Truth is often hard to ascertain, with police and lawyers serving their own interests as well as the public’s. Consider the OJ Simpson case back in the mid 90s. Most people now believe OJ committed two murders, but LA’s police force did a poor job investigating the crime scene, and their racism rebounded on them. While OJ’s highly paid lawyers played every trick in the book to get him off. And succeeded.
That case has been played out on TV extensively due to OJ’s celebrity. Lesser mortals evade such exposure and may never be caught. It happens. That’s the uncomfortable truth.
But, reader, though I may let a murderer or two off the hook, bear in mind, no one actually gets killed. We are not at the Coliseum watching Christians torn apart by lions, but reading a tale that is total invention.
DH Smith
Writer of the Jack of All Trades series
In the seven currently published books of the series (Jack of All Trades, Jack of Spades, Jack o’Lantern, Jack by the Hedge, Jack in the Box, Jack on the Tower, and Jack Recalled) there are 10 murders in all. I am not counting the killings for self defence. Three of these murders are unsolved by the police. One was committed by three people, another by two, and a third by a single person. So six murderers get away with it. That’s a shockingly high count. Two of the victims though are thoroughly nasty people, so I believe readers will hope the murderers get off. The remaining one has not this let-off. The murdered person is not particularly bad. All I can say in its justification is that it is a clever murder, fooling the cops.
But not Jack.
The reader though is not left in the dark. That would be bad faith on my part. The reader expects to know who dunnit. And I will deliver. But stories often have a curious morality. In a cowboy movie, say, the goody shoots the baddy and we all cheer. Or take Robin Hood; he must have killed innocents galore, with all those flying arrows, in his philanthropic robbing of the rich to give to the poor. But then he’s a hard done by, good looking guy, and the King pardons him. So we are on his side.
Easy when it’s a myth.
In real life, I want murderers to get caught and to be punished, though there are a few cases that test this certainty. For example, take a woman who is battered by her husband for 15 years; one night she can’t take it anymore and kills him. There have been a few such cases in the last decades. By the letter of the law, in the UK, she would get at least 10 years in jail as that is the minimum sentence for murder. A good lawyer might get her off on self-defence, working on the jury’s sympathy. Though, if she has a poor lawyer she is likely to do the time.
In a crime novel, the writer can choose whether to let a murderer go free. That’s the theory, but in practice it is not so simple, as the writer has to satisfy the reader and come up with an ending that works.
In my three unsolved murders, in two of them, as I have said, a wicked person is killed. So in those cases rough justice is satisfied. In the third, I can’t claim that. Nor can I say too much without spoilers, but simply say real life is messy. We don’t live within the genre of cozy mysteries, where all murderers get caught. In the mean streets, some murders get away with it and the wrong person may be tried and sentenced.
Truth is often hard to ascertain, with police and lawyers serving their own interests as well as the public’s. Consider the OJ Simpson case back in the mid 90s. Most people now believe OJ committed two murders, but LA’s police force did a poor job investigating the crime scene, and their racism rebounded on them. While OJ’s highly paid lawyers played every trick in the book to get him off. And succeeded.
That case has been played out on TV extensively due to OJ’s celebrity. Lesser mortals evade such exposure and may never be caught. It happens. That’s the uncomfortable truth.
But, reader, though I may let a murderer or two off the hook, bear in mind, no one actually gets killed. We are not at the Coliseum watching Christians torn apart by lions, but reading a tale that is total invention.
DH Smith
Writer of the Jack of All Trades series
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