A friend asked me a few months ago, one eyebrow raised a little cynically, why I was so fixated with crime and why I've spent the past 15 years writing about murder and mayhem (see my crime ebooks at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/C.A.-Larmer/e/B006S9LC86/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1376891328&sr=1-2-ent).
I can't remember what I told her, but I do remember giving it considerable thought soon after.
Why AM I so fixated with crime, death, mysteries and puzzles? Why did I seek out The Three Investigators when all my friends were immersed in pony stories and The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe?
I think I have pinpointed why, or at least when my curiosity for crime began. I can't recall my age, but I must have been six or so, I was living in Brisbane, and had heard (either directly or via gossip) that a young child had been kidnapped off a Brisbane street in broad daylight and found days later chopped into a million pieces. (Allow a little poetic license here for a child's overactive imagination if you will.) That wasn't the worst bit for me, or at least the bit that stuck in my mind and haunted my dreams for years to come. What freaked me out was the 'broad daylight' bit. The poor kid, according to my hazy memory, was picked up and carried away in a public place, and despite wailing and flailing, onlookers allowed it to happen.
Why?! Why would they do that?!
I don't know if I worked it out for myself or if my mother explained it in a warning lesson, but it soon became obvious. The poor love had not made it clear this was a stranger. He/she (I'm sorry, I don't recall their gender) had screamed and cried, and onlookers had assumed it was just a very naughty child having a very disruptive tantrum. "The poor dad," they probably thought, glancing away and minding their own business.
I learnt then—and I have taught my own children since—that you must always let people know what's really going on. I learnt that if a stranger dared to scoop me up and try to haul me away, that I MUST scream out words to the effect of: "I don't know you! Let me go! Help, I don't know this man!"
It was an eerie story for a young child to hear and I can't even verify if it ever really happened. No Google back then to check it out now, just a horrible, lingering memory. Maybe it was a storyline from a dodgy TV show I had sneakily watched without my parents knowing. Perhaps it was a scenerio someone simply mentioned to me. I simply don't know. But it stuck with me and rather than being appalled and shrinking from crime, I feel, now, that it was the seed that began to grow into a lifelong passion for the dasterdly deeds of others.
What made that horrendous man steal that child in the middle of the day? What made him then chop that poor soul up? How did those onlookers feel afterwards, knowing they had allowed the kidnapping to happen? Who was that child? Who were the parents? The siblings? The murderer? How did the world settle down again after that?
How could it, ever again?
And so, perhaps, lacking answers and wanting some vestige of control, I began to read about crime and immerse myself in it. Because it seemed so damn important. This wasn't Black Beauty, this wasn't fantastical wardrobes that opened into fictitious worlds. This was life and death stuff.
And it was in each of our hands, whether we liked it or not.
I'd love to hear about YOUR first murder, your first whiff of the darker world outside. Share your stories, real or imagined, via comment below or drop me an email.
In the meantime, happy reading, (if you can!)
xo Christina
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