Kate Jackson’s How to Survive a Classic Crime Novel is amusing at times. Anyone who reads the Golden Age Classics from Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, John Dickson Carr, and other authors will recognize the situations. Jackson’s book not only warns readers how to avoid situations that will lead to their death, but it points out victims who have encountered those situations, and didn’t surive.
Jackson creates the Classic Crime Survival Research Unit (CCSRU) to advise readers of what to do and not do. With “Home Sweet Homicide”, she advises readers how to avoid the traps that are hiding in your own house, ones that could get you killed. Death can come from food, in the kitchen, the bedroom, the bathroom, the library. But there are also traps outside the house, in the swimming pool, the gardens. And, you certainly don’t want to announce to everyone that you’re changing your will until after it has been done.
You certainly don’t want to die en route, as Jackson covers in “Murder En Route”. She says with the changes in transportation in the 1930s, that changed crime fiction. As to Agatha Christie, “Seventy-five percent of the crimes she records involving murders set on a mode of transport occurred during the 1930s.” Jackson warns against all kinds of transport. She also warns readers against parties, holidays, and romance.
How to Survive a Classic Crime Novel is amusing with all its warnings against life, actually. It’s not going to be easy to survive a classic crime novel without an appropriate attempt on your life.
Kate Jackson’s website is https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress.com/
How to Survive a Classic Crime Novel by Kate Jackson. British Library Publishing, 2025. ISBN 9780712354387 (paperback), 192p.
FTC Full Disclosure – I bought a copy of the book.
One more, that we’ve seen several times recently on television series.
“I have to tell you something that will change the whole case.”
“What is it?”
“Not over the phone. I’ll meet you at midnight on the darkest street in Slumtown.”
Needless to say, when the detective/cop/heroine gets there, the witness has been murdered.
We saw this in REBUS (from 2000) last night.
What Kim said is always true of British shows, where the cops are (generally) not armed. “Wait for backup!” “Naah.”
I know. You see that stuff on TV shows, and those of us who read mysteries say how stupid can they be.
Here’s another one:
“This is a very dangerous man, and we know he’s heavily armed. The police will be there in ten minutes.” (Or, to a lone cop, “Backup will be there in ten minutes.”)
Character who has phoned in the crime nevertheless dashes off after the dangerous armed man, thinking, “No, I can’t wait. I have to go after him with my Swiss Army knife.”
Whether it’s the hero or a side character, I get so annoyed when this happens in a book, a TV series, or a movie that I can barely keep watching/reading.
I know. Drives me nuts, too, Kim!