Of Murder and Morals

 Q: Do you often/sometimes weave a moral message into your writing, or do you think that's awful, and something that should never be attempted? Can you recommend good examples of books that do one or the other?  

-from Susan 

 

“Moral” – (adjective) concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior

 

Well, implicitly, doesn’t that insinuate itself into a crime story? After all, we’re following actions that demonstrate right or wrong behavior and as writers we invite readers to make emotional choices as to who and what to applaud or reject. But I can think of a few current, highly successful writers who inject a character’s moral point of view as an active part of the plot. 

 

Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs is consciously, even self-consciously determining her actions based deliberately on her sense of right and wrong, justice and a demand for compassion. Set in the period between World War I and World War II and during the latter, the long series has lots to work with as people banged up against the right and wrong actions they could take. Like Inspector Foyle in the long-running TV series, Maisie directly confronts and comments on the outcomes of immoral actions everywhere she turns.

 

Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache and pretty much everyone around him acts out their strong sense of right and wrong in every book, musing openly, twisting in discomfort, facing temptation, realizing how their trust has been undermined by people who behave wrongly. He’s a policeman but many of the characters are private citizens, so it’s not all cops and robbers. It’s complicated.

 

I’m currently in love with James McBride’s writing. Deacon King Kong and The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, gorgeous novels, definitely have moral and immoral characters, but McBride never points out a moral message. His characters live and breathe, but don’t spend time talking about abstract notions; they simply act from some innate sense of what they need in order to be okay with themselves and others. 

 

Another wonderfully un-moralizing book is our own Josh Stalling’s Tricky. Josh doesn’t have to spell out why his characters do what they do, nor does he seem to want to push us to judgment. He simply tells us what is happening, what characters do, and we can see the ambiguities in behavior, the surprisingly nuanced ways people choose to act at times. 

 

Of course, my self gets into my stories and I have my own private sense of what’s right and not, but the only time I think I have worn my moral heart on my sleeve is in the reveal of who the elderly victim was in Murder and the Missing Dog. Otherwise, I try to leave moral perspectives to the readers, let them see the actions that define who someone is, care for the victims in some way that resonates with readers. I do deal with justice on some scale, and that’s why I end my books with a coda, a scene in which the fictional people who have had to deal with shock and death can come together, draw on their own strengths and be with people in their community as part of a healing process. I don’t think that’s a moral message, just one of comfort.What do you think?