Byline: Jack Batten
Today's class: How to insert information of
a technical nature into a
crime novel without confusing, irritating,
boring or otherwise alienating
all readers except those with Ph.D.s.
Attention, class.
Our topic for discussion in today's lecture is
titled How To Insert
Information Of A Technical Nature Into A Crime
Novel Without
Confusing, Irritating, Boring Or Otherwise Alienating
All Of The
Readers Except Those With Ph.D.s In The
Inserted Technical Subject.
And, class, as our texts for the discussion, we
are examining two new
books of crime fiction: Deadly Decisions by Kathy
Reichs and Demolition
Angel by Robert Crais.
Deadly Decisions is Reichs' third novel featuring
Tempe Brennan, the
forensic anthropologist who works out of Montreal.
In the new book,
which will no doubt follow the first two on to
the bestseller charts, Tempe
scurries around the city sorting out the messy
murders that result when
outlaw motorcycle gangs do battle for Montreal's
drug-dealing market.
In the search for clues, Tempe must bring herself,
and the reader, up to
speed on such esoteric subjects as the ailment
popularly known as water
on the brain, the tattoos favoured for anatomical
decor by bikers, and the
patterns etched by the splattering of blood on
the walls of a room where
the villains have whacked a victim.
Now, class, how do you suppose Reichs handles
the imparting of information
on these technical matters?
Well, here's the beginning of a lengthy dialogue
between Tempe and an expert
at the Montreal Neurological Institute, where
Tempe has gone seeking the inside
dope about water on the brain.
"Our McConnell Brain Imaging Centre," says the
expert, "is rated one of the
world's leading facilities."
"What other research do you do?" asks Tempe.
"A tremendous amount of groundbreaking work
has emanated from the MNI,"
says the expert. (webmaster's note: you bet
they have. I've been there. I had a class
there. So it's cool, even if Dr. Wilder
Penfield blew it when he thought that lobotomies
could cure epilepsy... but I'm sorry. We were
talking about Kathy Reichs and Robert
Crais. Back to the article.)
And in the same mind-numbing vein, the two drone
on about water on the brain
for several pages in which they get the subject
down on the ground and break its
arms.
Class, this is not the way to do it. This is not
easing the reader into the
information. It's entirely okay to disclose technical
facts by way of a two-
person conversation between one character who
is in possession of the facts
and another character who isn't. But the
conversation shouldn't read like the
transcript of a Regis Philbin interview with
a contestant on Who Wants To
Be A Millionaire. Subtlety is called for, class,
a bit of finesse in the palaver.
Subtlety is not Reichs' long suit in any department
of Deadly Decisions.
Contrivance and coincidence are more her plotting
speed. When Tempe's
impetuous teenage nephew from Texas comes to
visit his aunt and happens
to mention how much he likes choppers, it's guaranteed
the kid is going to get
himself instantly tangled with the very motorcycle
thugs his aunt is tracking.
And when a new employee turns up in Tempe's office,
a wasted young woman
who dresses all in black, it's a certainty this
person is wired in to the bikers.
The reader can see this stuff coming a mile off.
Tempe herself is an attractive character of a
harried, plucky sort. Since she also
possesses a sense of style, she registers as
a more agreeable Kay Scarpetta (the
coroner from the Patricia Cornwell series) with
a Martha Stewart gene thrown in.
That's not much perhaps, but it's something to
hang on to when Tempe gets into
another of her interminable fact-dropping chats
with the blood-splatter whiz or
the guy who knows more about Harley-Davidsons
than Eviel Knievel.
By contrast, class, let us turn to Demolition
Angel. Robert Crais' novels usually
feature the Los Angeles crime-sleuthing duo of
Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. But in
the new book, he drops them in favour of an LAPD
detective named Carol
Starkey, who used to work for the bomb squad.
Three years earlier, an accident blew up a bomb
that left Carol physically
scarred and psychologically jangled. Now she
works as a bomb investigator
for the department's Criminal Conspiracy Section,
and in that capacity,she
draws the case of a serial bomber named Mr. Red.
This guy is brilliant and
twisted and specializes in blowing up people
for fun and profit all over the
United States. According to all signs, he seems
to be currently in Carol's neck
of the woods.
Naturally, class, the book's plot depends on the
dispensing of much information
about the building and exploding of bombs, and
the way Crais deals out the details
makes the subject thrilling and engrossing. Carol
Starkey and the other bomb people
talk about their favourite subject in a manner
that suggests Maureen Dowd's New
York Times columns about Monica and Bill:
ironic, bitter, incisive, funny. The
conversations are also tied inextricably to the
plot.
Every new tidbit of information about Mr. Red's
bomb-making technique nudges
things ahead by another tiny increment. What
happens is that each time we learn
something new on the subject of bombs, we are
hooked a little deeper into the
story.
And this, class, is the model for handling the
problem of technical information
in a crime novel.
With such in mind, your next assignment is to
write a short story that involves
a computer hacker with a Macintosh iBook who
brings the Bloor subway
system to a halt at rush hour on a Friday afternoon
as a diversion for robbers
who stick up a bank at Lansdowne and Bloor. Include
all technical
details.
Class dismissed.
Jack Batten's Whodunit appears
every two weeks.