tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/murder-mystery-42886/articlesMurder mystery – The Conversation2023-09-18T14:54:11Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2137962023-09-18T14:54:11Z2023-09-18T14:54:11ZA Haunting in Venice – the Poirot film franchise finds its footing in this spooky murder mystery<p>Hercule Poirot, the world’s greatest and most particular detective, returns in Kenneth Branagh’s third outing as director and star. <em>A Haunting in Venice</em> is set in 1947, ten years after Poirot solved the case in <em>Death on the Nile</em> (2022). </p>
<p>It is, apparently, inspired by Agatha Christie’s 1969 novel <a href="https://www.agathachristie.com/en/stories/halloween-party">Hallowe’en Party</a>. Here, however, the English countryside is replaced with the labyrinthine waterways of Venice and the story, while maintaining some similarities, is wildly different. </p>
<p>Poirot (Branagh) has retired for a quiet life, where the only guests he will see are delivering pastries. Of course, he won’t stay retired for long. His old friend the mystery writer Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey) asks Poirot to debunk a psychic medium, Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), whose powers seem too good to be true.</p>
<p>Reynolds leads Poirot to a Halloween party in a decaying and haunted palazzo, which provides the perfect backdrop for a spooky, jump-filled series of incidents. The party is just the starter, and the real event is a seance that is attended by a cast of intriguing characters. </p>
<p>The faded palazzo belongs to the glamorous opera singer Rowena Drake who recently lost her daughter, Alicia, whom she is hoping to contact. It is believed that after mental illness, possibly due to a curse connected to the palazzo’s history, Alicia took her own life, throwing herself from her window into the canal below. This theory is quickly dashed during the seance.</p>
<p>In true Agatha Christie fashion, what begins as a case of unmasking a phoney quickly turns into a hunt for a murderer as the exits are locked and all in attendance come under suspicion.</p>
<p>Let me put my cards on the table: I’m a massive Agatha Christie fan, and so are many of my friends. Knowing that this was more “inspired by” than “based on” the book, we made our own predictions about what a tragedy this film would be.</p>
<p>I left the cinema, however, pleasantly surprised.</p>
<p>It is not a straightforward book-to-screen adaptation as the past two have been. As a film, though, and an instalment in Branagh’s Poirotverse, <em>A Haunting in Venice</em> is strong. It’s beautiful, easy to follow and has a killer cast (pun intended).</p>
<h2>A justified murder?</h2>
<p>After three films, it seems Branagh is getting used to his character, bringing a level of depth and intrigue that previous adaptations have lacked. His Poirot does unexpected things – from bobbing for apples to breaking down a door – but remains the fussy, conceited character we have come to love. </p>
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<p>Yeoh is also formidable, squeezing every possible nuance from her too-small role.</p>
<p>They are joined by a stellar cast, including Kelly Reilly as Rowena Drake and Jamie Dornan and the young Jude Hill as a retired doctor struggling with PTSD and his precocious son. </p>
<p>None of these are the characters as Christie wrote them. Fans of the books may particularly regret how Ariadne Oliver is presented. In the books, she is essentially Christie’s self-portrait. Here, she is American, and less nice. But Fey who is, frankly, playing Tina Fey – a fast-talking, popular and very canny writer – plays this version of Oliver superbly. </p>
<p>Screenwriter Michael Green, who also adapted <em>Murder on the Orient Express</em> and <em>Death on the Nile</em>, has described his own work here as “<a href="https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/a-haunting-in-venice-halloween-party-poirot-agatha-christie">a murder</a>” of Agatha Christie’s <em>Hallowe’en Party</em>. But, he insists, it was “a justifiable homicide”.</p>
<h2>The same soul</h2>
<p>The puzzle and the names of characters have stayed the same, but everything else is a pick-and-mix of ideas and references from elsewhere in, and beyond, the Christie canon. There are nods to other Christie works, including her supernatural short story <a href="https://www.agathachristie.com/en/stories/the-last-s%C3%A9ance-collection">The Last Séance</a> (1926) and a late Miss Marple novel, <a href="https://www.agathachristie.com/en/stories/nemesis">Nemesis</a> (1971), which has almost certainly influenced the solution. </p>
<p>You could say that the film does stay true to the soul of Christie’s novel, although it is a completely different story. </p>
<p>Christie’s murder mystery, set in the English countryside over several days, focuses on the haunting power of obsession and deals with some of the worst crimes imaginable – the murder and psychological abuse of children. Branagh’s film is pitched as a ghost story and takes place over a single night in a very atmospheric palazzo with a chequered past. In Venice, the haunting is more literal, but the story is the same – it warns of the destructive nature of obsession and touches on the abuse of children.</p>
<p>While A Haunting in Venice is not an Agatha Christie story, it is one that could not exist without her vast and varied body of work. </p>
<p>As well as being the supreme mystery writer, Christie had a keen interest in the unexplained, writing several ghost stories throughout her life. But she never blurred the lines between science and the supernatural in the context of detective fiction. She kept those two interests separate. This film does not. As a result, it struggles sometimes to strike a balance. Is this a ghost story or a detective story? Even at the end, we are never quite sure.</p>
<p>Does this affect our enjoyment? It depends on what you want out of it. If you are looking for an out-and-out scary movie, this one may not be for you. If you are looking for a straightforward whodunit, perhaps look elsewhere. But if you want something in between, it’s right on the money.</p>
<p>But, with the freedom to take on a lesser-known case, Branagh’s Poirot seems finally to have found his footing. While this is also far from a perfect outing, it is a beautifully shot tale of terror that will keep you engaged to the last minute.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jamie Bernthal-Hooker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The most recent instalment in Kenneth Branagh’s Poirot franchise is not faithful to Agatha Christie’s work, but it is entertaining all the same.Jamie Bernthal-Hooker, Visiting Senior Fellow in English and Creative Writing, University of SuffolkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1760162022-02-15T03:37:37Z2022-02-15T03:37:37ZKenneth Branagh’s Death on the Nile seems to forget Agatha Christie was a master of the murder mystery<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446180/original/file-20220214-21-sf9xpi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=891%2C5%2C2655%2C1575&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Disney</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Kenneth Branagh’s new adaptation of Death on the Nile arrives with a lot of preconceived baggage. We know Agatha Christie. We know Poirot.</p>
<p>Christie’s influence on the murder mystery genre cannot be overstated. Her stories feature heavily in the contemporary media landscape; reruns of various incarnations regularly appear in television schedules. David Suchet’s portrayal of her detective Hercule Poirot is iconic – as are Julia McKenzie, Geraldine McEwan and Joan Hickson as Miss Marple. </p>
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<span class="caption">The first cinematic adaptation of a Christie mystery.</span>
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<p>The author of 66 detective novels, 14 short story collections and six bittersweet romance novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, Christie has sold <a href="https://www.agathachristie.com/en/about-christie">over two billion books</a>. The first film adaptation of her work was The Passing of Mr Quinn in 1928. Her mysteries have been a staple of the big and small screen ever since.</p>
<p>Key to the Agatha Christie narrative – on screen and on the page – is the puzzle. The murder mystery is ultimately a game where you have to guess the killer before the detective does.</p>
<p>For many fans of Christie, adaptations are judged according to the degree to which they conform to their source text. How close is the adaptation to Christie’s original puzzle? Do the clues “fit together” in a similar fashion?</p>
<p>Reactions to Branagh’s adaptations of Christie complicate this picture even further. We aren’t just comparing these films to the novels themselves but other screen adaptations – the portrayals of Poirot we are more accustomed to. </p>
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<h2>Past Poirots</h2>
<p>David Suchet is known as the quintessential Poirot, having played the role on television from 1989 to 2013. Suchet is faithful to Christie’s description of Poirot in her writing and fantastic in portraying Poirot’s iconic “rapid, mincing gait” and particular mannerisms. </p>
<p>This is Branagh’s second performance as Poirot. In 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express, the importance of the clues given by the suspects in the interviews became secondary to Branagh’s <a href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/2017/11/8/18385801/others-sent-to-back-of-train-in-branagh-s-murder-on-orient-express">own peculiar portrayal</a> of Poirot. </p>
<p>Branagh’s adaptations are more concerned with Poirot himself than any of the suspects. </p>
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<p>The method of the crime in Death on the Nile, the puzzle Poirot (and we) must solve, is very intricate. It is one of Christie’s best in my opinion. In Branagh’s film, the central murder happens far too late in the narrative: the murder happening 70 minutes into a two hour film leaves insufficient time for the investigation.</p>
<p>What I love about the books and many of the adaptations, particularly Suchet’s versions, is how each clue is slowly considered. </p>
<p>How do we interpret each clue? What are its implications? This is where having an assistant for Poirot to bounce ideas off (and to show off as well) comes in handy. In the book of Death on the Nile it is Colonel Race. In this film, Poirot doesn’t really engage with anyone in any meaningful manner. </p>
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<p>Rather than just a mystery, this film functions more as an exploratory narrative into Poirot. We get an absurd origin story for his moustache. We learn of his lost love. This theme about the extremities heartbreak can drive us to permeates throughout all the suspects. </p>
<p>It is an interesting narrative device but, in the end, it is still all about Poirot. There is no care given to these suspects or the importance of several clues. </p>
<p>But the biggest crime with Branagh’s portrayal of Poirot is the lack of charm. While the Poirot audiences are used to is peculiar, pompous and obsessed with order, he is above all else charming. He gets to know each suspect, asks them seemingly irrelevant questions and makes them lower their guard. </p>
<p>In this version he is gruff, unfriendly and often mean.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/poirot-at-100-the-refugee-detective-who-stole-britains-heart-153665">Poirot at 100: the refugee detective who stole Britain's heart</a>
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<h2>Death of the author</h2>
<p>As with Murder on the Orient Express, Branagh again has the film veer into absurd action sequences. These moments break the narrative tone. The Poirot we are accustomed to does not chase suspects as if he was an action hero.</p>
<p>The visual effects are notably poor. The green screen is laughable at times. With the exception of a wonderful scene in Rameses II’s tomb, there is no genuine sense of place. There is no depth given to Egypt here. </p>
<p>There is so much potential to this film. The cast is superb and harks back to the incredible cast of the 1978 version, which featured Maggie Smith, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Angela Lansbury and Jane Birkin.</p>
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<p>The Murder on the Orient Express performed well at the box office but received mixed critical reviews. The negative response was centred largely around the notion of fidelity. As <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/11/murder-on-the-orient-express-review/545501/">the Atlantic described it</a>, the film was “self-indulgent and thoroughly unnecessary”. </p>
<p>Branagh’s adaptation of Death on the Nile has been met with an equal amount of trepidation. The adapted work can never fully forget the original source. </p>
<p>It is interesting, then, that Christie’s name isn’t as present on the promotional material for Death on the Nile as, say, the BBC’s recent <a href="https://deadline.com/2020/04/sarah-phelps-interview-the-pale-horse-1202908068/">collection of miniseries</a> adapted by Sarah Phelps. </p>
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<p>Perhaps this is to signal Christie is no longer the sole author of this mystery, or maybe we are supposed to believe this version of Christie is elevated above the quaint, televisual fare that we may be accustomed to.</p>
<p>Fidelity informs the critical responses of Agatha Christie fans to adaptations of her work because, as film academic <a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Now-Major-Motion-Picture-Adaptations-ebook/dp/B00E1CYHIE">Christine Geraghty argues</a>, “faithfulness matters when it matters to the viewer”. </p>
<p>Branagh’s adaptations of Christie are for an audience that haven’t read the original book and don’t already adore Suchet’s portrayal of Poirot. This film is for a new audience: an audience which isn’t hoping for fidelity.</p>
<p>If many go on to read her work and watch the rich history of Agatha Christie screen adaptations, that can only be a good thing – it gets a lot better than this attempt. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/death-on-the-nile-a-meditation-on-celebrity-and-a-riposte-to-christies-critics-176632">Death on the Nile: a meditation on celebrity and a riposte to Christie's critics</a>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stuart Richards does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Branagh’s adaptations are more concerned with Poirot himself than any of the suspects – the murder in this film only happens 70 minutes in.Stuart Richards, Lecturer in Screen Studies, University of South AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1745022022-01-07T12:25:23Z2022-01-07T12:25:23ZRichard III’s reign was dogged by more rumours than just the Princes in the Tower<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439803/original/file-20220107-48044-1keawbs.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Portrait of Richard III.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/use-this-image/?mkey=mw05304">National Portrait Gallery</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The fate of the 12-year-old Edward V and his younger brother Richard, “the Princes in the Tower” (a misnomer as one of the “princes”, Edward, was actually king), has been the subject of much speculation since their disappearance in June 1483. Edward V’s father, Edward IV, died on April 9 that year, leaving his son as king and a relatively peaceful kingdom. </p>
<p>Yet, within two months everything had changed: several stalwarts of Edward IV’s regime were dead after a series of violent coups by his only living brother Richard, duke of Gloucester who took the crown for himself on June 26 1483. The two princes were never seen again after going to the Tower of London on June 16 and rumours about their demise began circulating soon after.</p>
<p>Rumours about Richard’s hand in the demise of his nephews quickly arose. The most famous example is an account by an Italian in London at the time, <a href="https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-50257?rskey=0PdEWU&result=1">Dominic Mancini</a>, who reported rumours about the death of the princes almost immediately after their disappearance. Although these rumours were circulating, Richard did nothing to quell them. If they were alive, Richard never proved as much. At the very least, Richard can be charged with making himself easy to smear.</p>
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<img alt="Portrait of two young boys on a staircase." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439804/original/file-20220107-33400-bujhme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439804/original/file-20220107-33400-bujhme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439804/original/file-20220107-33400-bujhme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439804/original/file-20220107-33400-bujhme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439804/original/file-20220107-33400-bujhme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439804/original/file-20220107-33400-bujhme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439804/original/file-20220107-33400-bujhme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Princes in the Tower, Richard Duke of York and Duke of Norfolk King Edward V.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/use-this-image/?email=naomi.joseph%40theconversation.com&form=cc&mkey=mw197046">National Portrait Gallery, London</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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<p>Richard’s reign and his character quickly became the subject of controversies that have continued for more than half a millennium. The overwhelming attention paid to the fate of the Princes in the Tower has meant the fact that Richard III’s two-year reign was dominated by rumour and conspiracy other than just that surrounding his nephews is often forgotten. </p>
<h2>Rumour and political turmoil</h2>
<p>Fake news and conspiracy theories need not only be associated <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-blame-social-media-for-conspiracy-theories-they-would-still-flourish-without-it-138635">with the internet</a>, or even the modern world. Richard III’s dramatic coup allowed rumour and gossip to flourish from the plausible to the outlandish.</p>
<p>On March 20 1485, two weeks after the death of his wife, Anne, Richard publicly denied one such outlandish rumour. The word was that he had poisoned her so he could marry his niece. This rumour was almost certainly false: Richard was grief stricken by Anne’s death and an incestuous marriage to his niece offered little tangible benefit. Yet, the rumour was deemed plausible because Richard’s son had died leaving him with no heir and a new, younger, wife may have given him more opportunities to produce one. Richard did have a ruthless streak and his late wife was his also his cousin. Richard was killed in battle five months later. Had he lived he would have almost certainly remarried but to whom we can only speculate and there is little to suggest that he would have seen his niece as a suitable candidate.</p>
<p>While subject to much gossip, Richard was not beyond using rumours and fabrication to his own advantage. He had his nephews declared illegitimate on the grounds that their father, Edward IV, was already married to another women, Dame Eleanor Butler. This made his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville bigamy and therefore illegal. Illegitimacy meant their two sons could not inherit the crown. This was most likely a fabrication but those living in England during his reign seem to have <a href="https://www.rsj.winchester.ac.uk/articles/abstract/10.21039/rsj.v3i1.75/">at least gone along with this story</a>.</p>
<p>Richard III usurped his nephew after several decades of intermittent political conflict. There had been two civil wars in the previous 25 years. Any dramatic changes in the governance of the country were bound to set the rumour mill into overdrive. In such circumstances the job of disentangling fact from fiction and identifying misinformation could be almost impossible.</p>
<h2>Public interest</h2>
<p>These and other stories are overwhelming overlooked when people talk about Richard III. To this day every shred of new evidence that emerges about the possible fate of the princes gains attention, bringing this sole story back to the fore. </p>
<p>One of the first detailed accounts linking the deaths of the princes to Richard was written by Sir Thomas More, who would go on to become Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor. In it More cites two men, Miles Forest and John Dighton, as the murderers who he states were recruited by a servant of Richard III. Many have discounted this story as “Tudor propaganda”.</p>
<p>However, <a href="https://theconversation.com/princes-in-the-tower-how-i-established-a-direct-link-between-richard-iii-and-the-two-murders-159836">a new archival discovery found</a> Thomas More had contact with two of Miles Forest’s sons – one of whom was working for Cardinal Wolsey and the other in Henry VIII’s chamber. It is assumed that More would have had contact with them when writing about Richard III. While this is not conclusive proof of Richard’s culpability it is perhaps as good as we can expect. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Portrait of Thomas More." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439805/original/file-20220107-13-1iccnbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439805/original/file-20220107-13-1iccnbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439805/original/file-20220107-13-1iccnbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439805/original/file-20220107-13-1iccnbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439805/original/file-20220107-13-1iccnbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439805/original/file-20220107-13-1iccnbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439805/original/file-20220107-13-1iccnbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sir Thomas More wrote the first account about the suspected murder of Richard III’s nephews.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/use-this-image/?mkey=mw04514">National Portrait Gallery, London.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet, other evidence has been brought forth claiming that <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/richard-iii-didnt-murder-princes-25809860">Edward V was kept in hiding for his own safety</a> by Richard after he made an agreement with Edward’s mother. Edward apparently lived out his days in the south west under the name John Evans. This is not impossible, though it is highly unlikely.</p>
<p>What is impossible is to prove beyond reasonable doubt what happened to the princes. Indeed, when the evidence subjected to trial by jury at the Old Bailey around 500 years after the events, in 1984, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6pnqnlsvcw">Richard was found not guilty</a>. Yet, the overwhelming consensus among historians is that Richard probably had some hand in the killing of the two princes. A rebellion in the autumn of 1483 sought to replace Richard with the exiled Henry Tudor (the victor of Bosworth two years later), presumably under the belief that the princes were no longer alive.</p>
<p>The prevalence of this murder mystery in public discussions of Richard III’s life is unfortunate. Richard only reigned for 26 months, being killed at the battle of Bosworth then <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-panic-the-car-park-skeleton-is-almost-certainly-richard-iii-25109">most likely being buried in Leicester</a>. Talk about Richard’s culpability risks reducing the study of history to a search for heroes and villains, and says little about medieval society or its values.</p>
<p>Without understanding those societies, history becomes no more than a collection of facts designed to create good guys and bad guys. In many cases, who the heroes and villains of history were <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practice/perspective-drives-our-interpretation-of-heroes-and-villains-in-history/">is a matter of perspective</a>. Surely it is more interesting to consider why people held certain beliefs or why certain rumours and false news flourished than to continually revisit a whodunit?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174502/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gordon McKelvie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Rumours and gossip dominated his short reign and the stories were more than just about the Princes in the Tower.Gordon McKelvie, Senior Lecturer in History, University of WinchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1598362021-07-27T10:20:42Z2021-07-27T10:20:42ZPrinces in the Tower: how I established a direct link between Richard III and the two murders<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399775/original/file-20210510-17-14ydkm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Public Domain/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is perhaps one of the greatest murder mystery stories in British history – a young king and his brother simply vanish. The boys, now dubbed “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/princes_in_tower.html">the Princes in the Tower</a>”, were held in the Tower of London in 1483, but disappeared from public view, never to be seen again.</p>
<p>Richard III has long been held responsible for the murder of his nephews in a dispute about succession to the throne. But Richard’s defenders have pointed to a lack of hard evidence to connect the king to the disappearance of the princes – who were aged just 12 and nine when Richard took the throne in June 1483.</p>
<p>But I believe <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-229X.13100">my recent research</a> provides the most powerful evidence yet as to who the boys’ murderers were. And it connects the murderers directly to <a href="https://theconversation.com/nine-blows-to-the-head-and-then-he-was-dead-forensics-shed-light-on-killing-of-richard-iii-31751">Richard III</a>.</p>
<h2>The princes</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Two young boys dressed in black stand in a tower." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399738/original/file-20210510-16-rqf32c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399738/original/file-20210510-16-rqf32c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399738/original/file-20210510-16-rqf32c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399738/original/file-20210510-16-rqf32c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399738/original/file-20210510-16-rqf32c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1223&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399738/original/file-20210510-16-rqf32c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1223&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399738/original/file-20210510-16-rqf32c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1223&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Painting of the two princes, Edward and Richard, in the Tower, 1483 by Sir John Everett Millais.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Princes.jpg">John Everett Millais, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The first detailed account linking the deaths of the princes to Richard can be found in <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/thomas-mores-history-of-king-richard-iii">the History of King Richard III</a> by Sir Thomas More, a public servant who from 1518 served on Henry VIII’s Privy Council and later became Lord Chancellor (Henry succeeded to the throne in 1509, after his father defeated Richard III in 1485). In his book, written about 30 years later, More names two men, Miles Forest and John Dighton, as the murderers. And says they were recruited by Sir James Tyrell, a servant of Richard III at his orders.</p>
<p>More claims that Richard felt he wouldn’t be fully accepted as king while the boys were still alive so he made a plan to get rid of them. He ordered the Constable of the Tower to give Tyrell the keys to the Tower for one night. Tyrell planned to murder the boys in their beds and chose Forest, one of their servants, and Dighton, who looked after his horses, to do the deed. All the other servants were ordered to leave so the murder could be carried out. Then Tyrell ordered the men to bury the boys at the foot of some stairs, deep in the ground.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399737/original/file-20210510-5598-ne6i3d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399737/original/file-20210510-5598-ne6i3d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399737/original/file-20210510-5598-ne6i3d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399737/original/file-20210510-5598-ne6i3d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399737/original/file-20210510-5598-ne6i3d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=868&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399737/original/file-20210510-5598-ne6i3d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399737/original/file-20210510-5598-ne6i3d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399737/original/file-20210510-5598-ne6i3d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thomas More wrote his History of King Richard III between around 1513 and 1518.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/thomas-mores-history-of-king-richard-iii">British Library</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Written over 30 years after the events, it is easy for Richard’s supporters to dismiss More’s version of events. Indeed, many people have <a href="https://zenodo.org/record/1431672#.YJqWbahKiUk">questioned this story</a>, seeing it as “Tudor propaganda”, designed to blacken the name of a dead king. It has even been suggested that the names of the alleged murderers were made up by More. </p>
<p>But I’ve discovered that the names More gives for the men who are alleged to have killed the princes (Forest and Dighton) are not imaginary, but real people. </p>
<h2>Finding the clues</h2>
<p>By the middle of the 1510s when More was working on his book, Edward Forest, son of suspect Miles Forest was a servant of Henry VIII’s chamber, and Miles, his brother, was employed by top adviser Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. In this way, the sons were living and working alongside More – meaning he would have been able to speak with them directly.</p>
<p>Both brothers were also the recipients of royal grants and leases of royal lands and offices. This shows how favoured they were by Henry VIII and builds on <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-229X.13100">evidence</a> I have discovered to suggest the brothers were at the heart of the Tudor regime.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399739/original/file-20210510-16-uhyta6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399739/original/file-20210510-16-uhyta6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399739/original/file-20210510-16-uhyta6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399739/original/file-20210510-16-uhyta6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399739/original/file-20210510-16-uhyta6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399739/original/file-20210510-16-uhyta6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1016&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399739/original/file-20210510-16-uhyta6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1016&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399739/original/file-20210510-16-uhyta6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1016&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Richard III of England, painted c.1520.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Richard_III_earliest_surviving_portrait.jpg">Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I’ve also discovered that when More was composing his other great work, Utopia, in 1515 – and very likely thinking through the History of King Richard III – Miles Forest junior was a messenger between Henry VIII’s court in England and the embassy on which More served. This connects More’s world very directly to the story he is telling, and to the man he says is the leading murderer of the princes in the Tower.</p>
<p>This is a story that is not going away anytime soon. Indeed, the recent announcement of a <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/steve-coogan-stephen-frears-teaming-for-the-lost-king-about-woman-who-found-king-richard-iiis-remains">new film</a> about the rediscovery of Richard III, written by Steve Coogan and Stephen Frears, shows that interest in the controversial monarch is as strong as ever. </p>
<p>And while my latest evidence does not prove definitively that Richard III murdered his nephews, it is certainly clear proof that More wrote his history when he was in direct contact with the men who were closely associated with this most notorious of crimes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159836/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tim Thornton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Account of the murders written by Thomas More was based more in fact than fiction.Tim Thornton, Professor of History and Deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of HuddersfieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1513712021-03-29T19:04:12Z2021-03-29T19:04:12ZMy favourite detective: In the Cut’s Frannie Thorstin and her fatal attractions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392125/original/file-20210329-25-1ytjt3n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C7%2C2542%2C1366&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In the Cut (2003)</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0199626/mediaviewer/rm1916239873/">IMDB</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/my-favourite-detective-95869">this series</a>, writers pay tribute to fictional detectives on the page and on screen.</em> </p>
<hr>
<p>Frannie Thorstin, the narrator of Susanna Moore’s neo-noir novel <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/153970.In_the_Cut">In The Cut</a> (1995) is a collector of urban slang. A divorced English professor living alone, she is writing a book on dialects. So, the novel is peppered with eclectic lists of words that connect to the themes of the book — desire, sexual obsession and violence against women. </p>
<p>“The words themselves,” she says, “… in their wit, exuberance, mistakenness and violence — are thrilling to me.” </p>
<p>One such list runs a graphic gamut: from “virginia, n., vagina (as in ‘he penetrated her Virginia with a hammer’)” to “dixie cup, n., a person who is considered disposable”. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392129/original/file-20210329-15-5bcz3l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="book cover: In the Cut" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392129/original/file-20210329-15-5bcz3l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392129/original/file-20210329-15-5bcz3l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392129/original/file-20210329-15-5bcz3l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392129/original/file-20210329-15-5bcz3l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=926&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392129/original/file-20210329-15-5bcz3l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392129/original/file-20210329-15-5bcz3l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392129/original/file-20210329-15-5bcz3l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/153970.In_the_Cut?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=hGUzaA6v0x&rank=1">Goodreads</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Frannie’s eye is forensic, catching on the smallest gestures and imbuing them with meaning, the minutiae of a world alive with possibilities, portents, and signals. When she enters rooms her eyes scan like cameras, cataloguing and framing. In this way Frannie fulfils the detective function in the novel better than the actual detectives into whose macho orbit she is drawn. The latter spending most of their time ribbing each other and holding up bars, without doing much detecting at all. </p>
<h2>Some collection</h2>
<p>If Frannie is a collector of words, she is also a collector of men, sometimes by force of circumstance, sometimes by design. The fatal combination of her sex appeal and intellect fuels an increasing sense of dread, caught as she is in a sticky web of male attention. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I keep a list in my head, on the edge of consciousness, that now and then forces me to acknowledge it: A friend John Graham, seems to be keeping an eye on me. A student of mine Cornelius Webb, has developed an attachment to me that may be harmless but that is certainly inappropriate. He too seems to be watching me. Jimmy Malloy, a homicide detective, is investigating the abduction and murder of a young woman who shortly before her death was sucking his cock. Something which I do now. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Her fascination with Malloy’s body tallies with her manner of interpretation, both cerebral and sensual. She fantasises about him, in scenes which celebrate self-pleasure: “dreaming him through my nightgown” and when she’s with him her eye never strays, “he turned a quarter in his fingers, as if he were practising a magic trick. As always, I was pulled in by the small gesture”. A force-field of desire runs between them, erotic and unstable. </p>
<p>As a reader, the combination of poetry, sensuality and irreverence draws me to Frannie too — but unlike the men in her life those aspects don’t also drive me crazy. Her colleague Mr Reilly denounces her lack of boundaries. Her student Cornelius says, “you be looking to fuck with me since day one”. Malloy feels “like I’m running all the time. Running just to stay even”. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>‘Stop analysing every fucking thing.’ He pronounced the word ‘every’ as if it had three syllables. </p>
<p>‘I thought you liked it.’ I said.</p>
<p>‘I did at first.’ </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392131/original/file-20210329-13-1k3ltxp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="F train in New York subway" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392131/original/file-20210329-13-1k3ltxp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392131/original/file-20210329-13-1k3ltxp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392131/original/file-20210329-13-1k3ltxp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392131/original/file-20210329-13-1k3ltxp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392131/original/file-20210329-13-1k3ltxp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392131/original/file-20210329-13-1k3ltxp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392131/original/file-20210329-13-1k3ltxp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Set in New York, the line between good guys and bad guys becomes blurred beyond recognition.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0199626/mediaviewer/rm1614249985/">IMDB</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-crime-fighters-to-crime-writers-a-new-batch-of-female-authors-brings-stories-that-are-closer-to-home-123770">From crime fighters to crime writers — a new batch of female authors brings stories that are closer to home</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A dark milieu</h2>
<p>In this re-figuring of classic noir tropes, Malloy is the femme fatale, his partner Detective Rodriguez plays the killer and Frannie is caught somewhere between. This multiplicity of characterisation is common to neo- and post-noir genres, where the lone figure of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/my-favourite-detective-sam-spade-as-hard-as-nails-and-the-smartest-guy-in-the-room-149295">Sam Spade</a> or Phillip Marlowe recedes and a more complicated milieu emerges. </p>
<p>The lines between the good guys and the bad guys are not just ambiguous and ultimately reasserted, but erased completely. The reassurance of the classic noir detective becomes an illusion. Even Frannie’s well-honed capacities for observation are not enough to save her, she is not able to solve the mystery in time and rather than being redemptive the denouement is devastating. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/my-favourite-detective-sam-spade-as-hard-as-nails-and-the-smartest-guy-in-the-room-149295">My favourite detective: Sam Spade, as hard as nails and the smartest guy in the room</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Author Susanna Moore has said that after she spent two years reading classic detective fiction, she realised most of those guys couldn’t write sex. Or at least <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcast/sex-rage-and-the-past---an-interview-with-susanna-moore">not the kind she wanted to write</a>. </p>
<p>In the Cut operates as meta-fiction. A book about writing and semiotics, clues and signs, a rewiring of noir expectations and tropes, personified by Frannie — a woman who refuses to fit neatly into the dominant narrative. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392127/original/file-20210329-13-zktf9z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392127/original/file-20210329-13-zktf9z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392127/original/file-20210329-13-zktf9z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392127/original/file-20210329-13-zktf9z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392127/original/file-20210329-13-zktf9z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392127/original/file-20210329-13-zktf9z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392127/original/file-20210329-13-zktf9z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392127/original/file-20210329-13-zktf9z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>A crime fiction character we needed but perhaps weren’t ready for. Reactions to the book and the film were extreme. Director Jane Campion’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0199626/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">2003 film</a> was released with an R rating and had a ruinous effect on the career of “America’s Sweetheart” Meg Ryan, who played Frannie and went on to discuss the role in an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blpq-Iwu25s">excruciating interview</a> with Michael Parkinson. </p>
<p>Potent feminised sexuality in proximity to violence proved too much for some, even though the film version was sanitised by producers. </p>
<p>Despite the divergent endings of the book and film, romantic mythologies are presented in both as insidious methods of control and entrapment.</p>
<p>Critics failed or perhaps refused to see this, but Frannie is aware of it from the start. “A dangerous combination for me,” she says. “Language and passion”. But even her self-awareness doesn’t prepare us for her end.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151371/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sally Breen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>English professor Frannie Thorstin gets tangled in a sticky web of male attention in the novel and film versions of In the Cut as she tries to sort the bad guys from the good.Sally Breen, Senior Lecturer in Writing and Publishing, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1536652021-01-22T10:14:22Z2021-01-22T10:14:22ZPoirot at 100: the refugee detective who stole Britain’s heart<p>A hundred years ago, Agatha Christie introduced British readers to a small man with an impeccably maintained moustache who, with the help of his “<a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199567454.001.0001/acref-9780199567454-e-1105">little grey cells</a>”, was very good at solving crimes. That man, of course, was Hercule Poirot, who made his debut in Christie’s first novel, <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/863/863-h/863-h.htm">The Mysterious Affair at Styles</a>, in 1921.</p>
<p>Though potentially the second most famous detective in British culture (after Sherlock Holmes), Poirot is not British at all but a refugee. Coming to England as part of a group of Belgians displaced by the first world war, his origins lie in Brussels. Writing about this retired Belgian police officer solving cases around the UK and across the globe, Christie was able to explore (and at times poke fun at) the complexities of Englishness and its relationship to continental Europe. </p>
<h2>European flair</h2>
<p>On the surface, Christie’s novels resemble a nostalgic retreat to the pastoral and to the English stately home. They can be read as a possible turning-inwards thanks to an emphasis on closed rooms and detailed floor plans of grand buildings. But such appearances are deceptive.</p>
<p>The opening of borders, both literal and intellectual, shapes Christie’s England. It was her understanding of the work of European thinkers that gives her detective an edge. Where an English detective, like Sherlock Holmes, looks for external pieces of evidence that can be analysed, Poirot solves the case by realising the hidden implications of people’s behaviour – including his own. Poirot’s Freudian focus on the psychology of suspects enables him to see that simple mistakes and slips of the tongue can hide deeper meanings. In The Mysterious Affair at Styles, a crucial clue is revealed when Poirot realises the importance of his own almost unconscious instinct to tidy. </p>
<p>In Christie’s world, the typically English common sense of policemen is not enough to solve the mystery. Instead, a dash of continental theory sheds light on what lies beneath the surface. </p>
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<p>Another of Poirot’s trademarks is his occasional struggle to find the correct English word or idiom. In The Mysterious Affair at Styles, he even misquotes Hamlet. Yet it would be a mistake to read these moments as simple errors. Instead, Poirot knowingly plays into the trope of the “funny foreigner”, using difficulties with language to disarm suspects and allay fears of suspicion (how could such a comic figure be so great a detective?). In the famous scenes where Poirot explains the truth, his English becomes markedly more fluent. In this, Poirot represents the outsider perfectly placed to see through English deceptions.</p>
<h2>Little England</h2>
<p>The success of the “funny foreigner” schtick with unsuspecting English plays into Christie’s larger exploration of Englishness in her books.</p>
<p>Poirot is an enthusiastic devotee of England. In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd he comments that England is “very beautiful, is it not?” But this enthusiasm is not always returned. A running joke of the Poirot novels and adaptations is that he is often mistaken as French. In Ackroyd, he is described as looking “just like a comic Frenchman in a revue”. But in a genre that demands close attention to detail, the joke here is at the expense of a particularly inward-looking type of Englishness, those who cannot tell the difference between the French and the Belgian. </p>
<p>Likewise, as literary scholar <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=w8gqhvyj0-8C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=christie&f=false">Alison Light</a> notes, Poirot’s popularity coincides with the expansion in travel, as the English increasingly saw themselves as tourists abroad. Several of Poirot’s most famous cases occur on modes of transport and in exotic locations, like Death on the Nile. However, while the English in these stories might be abroad, class relations from home still manage to play out wherever they might be. England follows them, and that inward-looking Englishness runs deep.</p>
<p>While Christie might have poked fun at England and Englishness, she managed to capture the hearts of British readers with her small, smart Belgian. Poirot was so loved by readers that Christie wrote 33 novels, two plays, and more than 50 short stories about him between 1921 and 1975. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/nov/10/david-suchet-poirot-and-me">ITV’s adaptation</a> of many of these stories, Agatha Christie’s Poirot starring David Suchet, ran for 25 years (1989-2013) and is also now considered a classic of British TV. Few fictional detectives have had their complete adventures adapted for the screen. In this regard, Poirot makes a strong claim to being Britain’s most loved detective.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153665/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Pittard has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>Christie used her Belgian sleuth to unpick ideas of England and Englishness.Christopher Pittard, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1401752020-06-14T19:56:58Z2020-06-14T19:56:58ZPsycho turns 60 – Hitchcock’s famous fright film broke all the rules<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341396/original/file-20200612-38742-1aw07sx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C5%2C1755%2C955&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BODE4ZDJiNTYtN2ViYy00OGE0LThhMjItNzA2NjI4NjA1MDAyXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjMzMDI4MjQ@._V1_SX1777_CR0,0,1777,962_AL_.jpg">Psycho/IMDB</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>November 1959. Film director <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000033/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Alfred Hitchcock</a> is at his commercial and critical peak after the successes of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052357/?ref_=nm_knf_i2">Vertigo</a> (1958) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053125/?ref_=nm_knf_i3">North by Northwest</a> (1959). So what does he do next? A black-and-white made-for-TV movie hastily shot, with no big-name actors and a leading actress who takes a shower, and … well, we’ll come to that. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054215/?ref_=nm_knf_i1">Psycho</a> (1960) remains Hitchcock’s most celebrated film. But it is really two films, glued together by the most iconic scene in cinema history. </p>
<p>Part one is a run-of-the-mill morality tale. Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) steals $40,000 from her Phoenix employee, and goes on the run. Guilt-stricken, she pulls into a deserted motel and chats with the owner, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). </p>
<p>He seems friendly enough – he makes her sandwiches and talks fondly about his mother – and Marion resolves to return the money. </p>
<p>Part two is a whodunnit. Marion’s sister (Vera Miles) and her lover (John Gavin) investigate her disappearance, and trace her steps back to the motel. Soon, they begin to have suspicions about Norman. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Wz719b9QUqY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘She just goes … a little mad sometimes.’</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Thriller with a twist</h2>
<p>A few years earlier, Hitchcock had watched Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1955 psychological masterpiece <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046911/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Les Diaboliques</a> and sought out a similar project – a horrific thriller with a twist ending. He read <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/156427.Psycho">Robert Bloch’s novel Psycho</a> – itself inspired by the real-life <a href="https://www.biography.com/crime-figure/ed-gein">Wisconsin killer Ed Gein</a> – and optioned the film rights.</p>
<p>Audiences saw things in Psycho that had never been shown before on screen. A toilet flushing. A murderer who goes unpunished. A post-coital Leigh, lying on a bed, dressed only in white underwear, while Gavin stands topless over her. </p>
<p>All of Hitchcock’s trademark obsessions are on show: voyeurism, the dominant matriarchal figure, the blonde heroine, the untrustworthy cop. </p>
<p>Over his career, Hitchcock had always flouted Hollywood’s <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93301189">Production Code</a>, those rigid rules that had been in place since the 1930s that prohibited onscreen nudity, sex and violence. Nowhere is Hitchcock’s brazen censor-defying clearer than in Psycho’s “shower scene”.</p>
<p>Marion steps into the shower, a shadowy figure rips back the curtain, and cinema’s most visceral scene unspools, brutally, before our very eyes. </p>
<p>Hitchcock, the master of suspense, never actually shows knife slicing flesh. Everything is implied, through liberal doses of chocolate sauce, hacked watermelons, Bernard Herrmann’s screeching violins, and Leigh’s blood-curdling screams. </p>
<p>In one 60-second scene, Hitchcock shatters all the rules. It’s the most famous of all bait and switches: you expect one thing, but get another. Up to that point, no film had killed off its lead character so early in the story (nowadays, such an audacious twist shows up everywhere, from The Lion King to Games of Thrones). As Leigh slides down the blinding white tiles, arm outstretched, a new kind of cinema is born: twisted, shocking, primal.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341397/original/file-20200612-38736-1ieokhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341397/original/file-20200612-38736-1ieokhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341397/original/file-20200612-38736-1ieokhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341397/original/file-20200612-38736-1ieokhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341397/original/file-20200612-38736-1ieokhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341397/original/file-20200612-38736-1ieokhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341397/original/file-20200612-38736-1ieokhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341397/original/file-20200612-38736-1ieokhk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Janet Leigh, the star of the film, leaves it at the 45-minute mark.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZmQwZmIyMTItNjQzZC00ODYzLThhMzctMmVlODk3MmU3NzBiXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjUxMjc1OTM@._V1_SX1777_CR0,0,1777,962_AL_.jpg">IMDB</a></span>
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<h2>Inventing the cinema event</h2>
<p>Hitchcock famously ordered cinemas to not let any latecomers into screenings of Psycho, to keep the element of surprise. </p>
<p>Previously, cinema-goers could wander into a film midway through, watch the last half, and then stick around for the restart to catch up on what they had missed. When your leading lady is butchered 45 minutes in, the film makes little sense if you arrive late – hence Hitchcock’s decree. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341395/original/file-20200612-38724-1rsxi6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341395/original/file-20200612-38724-1rsxi6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341395/original/file-20200612-38724-1rsxi6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341395/original/file-20200612-38724-1rsxi6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341395/original/file-20200612-38724-1rsxi6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341395/original/file-20200612-38724-1rsxi6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341395/original/file-20200612-38724-1rsxi6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341395/original/file-20200612-38724-1rsxi6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTgzMzM3NDY0NF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNDgwNDgwNzE@._V1_SY1000_SX652_AL_.jpg">IMDB</a></span>
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<p>While the reviews at the time of its cinema release were lukewarm, cinema as an “event”, as a communal experience shared by hundreds of people in the dark, began. There were queues around the blocks in cities across America as word of mouth grew. Grossing US$32 million (equivalent to A$468 million today) off a budget of US$800,000 (A$12 million today), Psycho made Hitchcock a very wealthy man.</p>
<p>Other elements contributed to Psycho’s enduring influence. Saul Bass’s opening credits, all intersecting lines and sans-serif titles, anticipate the film’s fixation with duality and overlap. </p>
<p>Budget constraints meant that Bernard Herrmann could only rely on his orchestra’s string section. Even people who have never seen the film instantly recognise his score. </p>
<p>And Anthony Perkins, typecast forever after as the nervous mother’s boy with a dark secret, crafts a performance that is both sweetly disarming and deeply unsettling. </p>
<h2>Psycho sequels</h2>
<p>Its reputation has only grown since 1960. Critics and audiences remain transfixed by Psycho’s storytelling verve and its queasy tonal shifts (murder mystery to black comedy to horror). </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/turner-prize-1996/turner-prize-1996-artists-douglas-gordon">Douglas Gordon’s 1993 art installation 24 Psycho</a> slowed the film down to last a full day. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Douglas Gordon’s 24 Psycho (1993) video installation pays homage to every frame of the film.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Academics have had a field day too, from <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=qx9dDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA4&ots=3sAjXQ_r40&dq=Raymond%20Durgnat%20micro-analysis%20psycho&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=Raymond%20Durgnat%20micro-analysis%20psycho&f=false">Raymond Durgnat’s lengthy micro-analysis</a> to <a href="https://egs.edu/biography/slavoj-zizek/">Slavoj Žižek</a>’s reading of Bates’s house as an illustration of Freud’s concept of the id, ego and superego. </p>
<p>Three progressively sillier sequels were made, as well as a colour <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0155975/?ref_=vp_back">shot-for-shot remake </a>by Gus van Sant in 1998. Brian De Palma’s entire back catalogue pays homage to Hitchcock, with whole sections of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070698/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_30">Sisters</a> (1972) to <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080661/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_24">Dressed to Kill</a> (1980) reworking Psycho’s delirious excesses. </p>
<p>Psycho’s box office success undoubtedly contributed to Hollywood’s abiding fascination with true-crime stories, serial killers, and slasher films. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341393/original/file-20200612-38695-vlbtdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341393/original/file-20200612-38695-vlbtdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341393/original/file-20200612-38695-vlbtdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341393/original/file-20200612-38695-vlbtdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341393/original/file-20200612-38695-vlbtdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341393/original/file-20200612-38695-vlbtdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341393/original/file-20200612-38695-vlbtdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341393/original/file-20200612-38695-vlbtdj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">‘Oh mother. What have you done?’ The recent Bates Motel series fills out the backstory to Psycho.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjMyODYzMDA5MF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwODYxNzk0NDE@._V1_SX1500_CR0,0,1500,999_AL_.jpg">IMDB</a></span>
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<p>More recently, the TV prequel series <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2188671/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Bates Motel</a> ran for four seasons, deepening Norman’s relationship with his mother and tracking his developing mental illness. </p>
<p>That series provides a set up for the events at the Bates Motel. Sixty years on, the setting for Psycho continues to exert such a pulsating thrill, even as we watch from behind the sofa.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140175/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben McCann does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sixty years after it premiered, Psycho remains Hitchcock’s most celebrated film. But it is really two films, glued together by the most iconic scene in cinema history.Ben McCann, Associate Professor of French Studies, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1405422020-06-11T17:33:35Z2020-06-11T17:33:35ZWho killed Sweden’s prime minister? 1986 assassination of Olof Palme is finally solved – maybe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341243/original/file-20200611-80774-4ji83p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C21%2C4890%2C3380&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The murder weapon in the Palme case was never found.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/digital-art-of-shooting-handgun-royalty-free-illustration/165768245?adppopup=true">zbruch via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It took 34 years, 10,000 interviews and <a href="https://polisen.se/aktuellt/nyheter/2020/juni/utredningen-om-palmemordet-avslutad/">134 murder confessions</a>, but the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme has now been solved. </p>
<p>Palme was shot on the Stockholm street Sveavägen – roughly, “Mother Sweden Way” – in February 1986, after a night at the movies with his wife and son.</p>
<p>On June 10, 2020, chief state prosecutor Krister Petersson identified the killer as <a href="https://www.svt.se/nyheter/snabbkollen/skandiamannen-pekas-ut-som-skyldig">Stig Engström</a>, an eyewitness dubbed “Skandia Man” during the initial murder investigation. However, no charges can be brought against Engström because he died in 2000, in an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/swedish-investigators-name-suspect-in-1986-assassination-of-prime-minister/2020/06/10/4e6244e6-ab05-11ea-868b-93d63cd833b2_story.html">apparent suicide</a>.</p>
<p>Engström is not the first person to be singled out or charged in Sweden’s most famous cold case. As I <a href="https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295988047/crime-and-fantasy-in-scandinavia/">write in my book on crime fiction in Scandinavia</a>, the Palme killing and bungled investigation represent a traumatic chapter in Sweden’s otherwise relatively peaceful history. </p>
<h2>Botched investigation</h2>
<p>In 1989 a man named Christer Pettersson was convicted of murdering Palme, leader of Sweden’s Social Democratic Party. Pettersson had a <a href="https://www.thelocal.se/20110228/32310">criminal past</a>, including <a href="https://murderpedia.org/male.P/p/pettersson-christer.htm">a manslaughter conviction</a>, and Olof Palme’s wife Lisbeth identified him in a police lineup as the man who killed her husband. </p>
<p>But an appeals court later overturned the conviction because the prosecutor <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801479366/blood-on-the-snow/#bookTabs=1">failed to present a murder weapon</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341227/original/file-20200611-80750-195kpn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341227/original/file-20200611-80750-195kpn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341227/original/file-20200611-80750-195kpn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341227/original/file-20200611-80750-195kpn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341227/original/file-20200611-80750-195kpn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341227/original/file-20200611-80750-195kpn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341227/original/file-20200611-80750-195kpn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341227/original/file-20200611-80750-195kpn9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The crime scene on Sveavägen street in central Stockholm, 1986.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/this-file-picture-taken-on-march-1-1986-shows-people-laying-news-photo/1218383594?adppopup=true">Eif R. Jansson/TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Now Swedish authorities seem <a href="https://polisen.se/aktuellt/nyheter/2020/juni/utredningen-om-palmemordet-avslutad/">confident Engström is their man</a> – or moderately confident, at least. </p>
<p>Engström came forward to police in 1986 after Palme’s murder because he worked as a graphic designer for the Skandia Insurance Company, located near the crime scene. He claimed to be one of the first on the scene, and told police he tried to help resuscitate the prime minister. </p>
<p>But in their recent reexamination of interviews and other material, police found problems with Engström’s eyewitness story. </p>
<p>“No one saw anyone resembling Engström in the role he described himself <a href="https://polisen.se/aktuellt/nyheter/2020/juni/utredningen-om-palmemordet-avslutad/">playing</a>,” said investigative lead Hans Melander in the press conference announcing the conclusion of the case. His story “doesn’t hang together.” </p>
<p>Engström was also a political opponent of Palme, who became prime minister in 1969. Palme had an aristocratic background and studied in the United States but became an outspoken socialist. His 15 years in office positioned Sweden as a “wealthy, advanced democracy that stood for equality, compassion and humanitarian values,” according to Jan Bondeson’s book “<a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801479366/blood-on-the-snow/#bookTabs=1">Murder on the Snow</a>.”</p>
<p>Palme’s progressive vision and his opposition to the Vietnam War, apartheid South Africa and dictatorships worldwide created many enemies, including the right-wing Engström.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341223/original/file-20200611-80778-xzloy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341223/original/file-20200611-80778-xzloy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341223/original/file-20200611-80778-xzloy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341223/original/file-20200611-80778-xzloy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341223/original/file-20200611-80778-xzloy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341223/original/file-20200611-80778-xzloy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341223/original/file-20200611-80778-xzloy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341223/original/file-20200611-80778-xzloy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Olof Palme four weeks before his death in 1986.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/swedids-late-primemminister-olof-palme-social-democrate-4-news-photo/526642472?adppopup=true">Francis Dean/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1992, Engström turned up at the door of journalist Jan Arvidsson and spoke at length about Palme’s murder – just as he had done with police in 1986. In the press interview, Engström provided details about a possible <a href="https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/7lw493/sista-intervjun-med-skandiamannen-var-valdigt-lugn">murder weapon</a> and suggested Palme’s murder could be a crime of opportunity. </p>
<p>However, “I personally would have used a more versatile weapon, a smaller caliber,” he said, adding: “If I had been the murderer.”</p>
<h2>‘We’ve come as far as we are able’</h2>
<p>Despite the official closure of the Palme case, <a href="https://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/live-presskonferens-med-statsminister-stefan-lofven/">many Swedes have reservations</a>. </p>
<p>The prosecutor, Petersson, presented no new or especially convincing evidence about why he believes Engström is the killer. The murder weapon remains missing, <a href="https://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/mordet-pa-olof-palme-folj-presskonferensen-direkt/">despite 738 weapons having been tested</a>.</p>
<p>But, Petersson explained, “We’ve come as far as we are able to come when it comes to a suspect.”</p>
<p>Doubt has shadowed the Palme investigation, which was criticized for failures to seal the crime scene and flawed analysis of witness testimony. Petersson took over the “Palme Group” in 2016 – one of many changes in leadership – and brought in a new team to review the voluminous material yet again. </p>
<p>The case also received renewed attention, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/10/world/europe/sweden-olof-palme-murder.html">possibly some useful new information</a>, with the 2018 serial publication of journalist Thomas Pettersson’s “<a href="https://magasinetfilter.se/tag/palmemordet-den-osannolika-mordaren/">The Unlikely Murderer</a>” in the magazine Filter. Petersson, who is not related to the suspect Christer Pettersson, turned over his findings to the prosecution. </p>
<p>Olof Palme’s son Mårten acknowledged that errors marred the <a href="https://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/live-presskonferens-med-statsminister-stefan-lofven/">investigation of his father’s killing</a>. </p>
<p>But, he said, “I believe the Skandia Man is guilty,” citing the compelling case presented in Filter magazine. “And I believe the case should be closed.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341222/original/file-20200611-80774-1jlxlm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341222/original/file-20200611-80774-1jlxlm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341222/original/file-20200611-80774-1jlxlm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341222/original/file-20200611-80774-1jlxlm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341222/original/file-20200611-80774-1jlxlm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341222/original/file-20200611-80774-1jlxlm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341222/original/file-20200611-80774-1jlxlm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341222/original/file-20200611-80774-1jlxlm5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A memorial plaque where Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was murdered.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/bouquets-of-flowers-lie-on-the-memorial-plaque-at-the-news-photo/1219076532?adppopup=true">Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Closure</h2>
<p>Solving the Palme killing may be an injection of good news for Sweden, which has suffered an <a href="https://www.livescience.com/results-of-sweden-covid19-response.html">exceptionally high death toll during the coronavirus pandemic</a>.</p>
<p>Sweden, which has not fought a war since 1814, has avoided the historical traumas of its European neighbors and become a leader in advancing international peace and cooperation. </p>
<p>But the assassination of Palme, who represented these values, is one of several traumatic domestic events to shake the country. In 1973, a prolonged hostage crisis at a bank spawned the term “<a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/scandinavian-crime-fiction-9781472529084/">Stockholm syndrome</a>.” In 2003, Foreign Minister Anna Lindh was murdered in a Stockholm department store.<br>
Swedes often speak of these events as a loss of innocence for the famously peaceful, trusting nation. In that sense, closing Palme’s case represents an ambivalent coming to terms with their modern history – a foothold of wisdom, perhaps, in a particularly difficult present. </p>
<p>“The shot on Sveavägen [Street] has been a crisis, a wound, a riddle without a solution,” <a href="https://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/live-presskonferens-med-statsminister-stefan-lofven/">said current Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven</a>. “The murder of a prime minister is a national trauma. It’s my deepest hope that the wound can now begin to heal.”</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140542/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Nestingen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Prosecutors say they’ve closed Sweden’s most famous cold case. But many Swedes still have doubts. The crime and botched investigation have been a ‘national trauma’ for this normally peaceful place.Andrew Nestingen, Professor, Department of Scandinavian Studies, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/836202017-09-07T15:34:42Z2017-09-07T15:34:42ZTake pity on forensic scientists – crime writers make their lives a nightmare <figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185101/original/file-20170907-9585-hbp7kb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The truth is not always out there. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-doctor-doing-blood-test-565713508?src=WjH5kf7_wFCSNECOY0EYbQ-1-3">Elnur</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A blackmailer steals a compromising letter from a woman of high standing. The police know he is keeping this letter in his home, but they cannot find it. Using the latest forensic tools they search every inch of the apartment, recording their efforts as follows: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We examined the rungs of every chair …. and, indeed, the jointings of every description of furniture, by the aid of a most powerful microscope. Had there been any traces of recent disturbance we should not have failed to detect it instantly. </p>
<p>A single grain of gimlet-dust, for example, would have been as obvious as an apple. Any disorder in the glueing – any unusual gaping in the joints – would have sufficed to insure [sic] detection.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Back in 1844, this description of the police using a powerful microscope with the promise of instant detection would have dazzled readers of Edgar Allan Poe’s <a href="http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7Ehyper/poe/purloine.html">The Purloined Letter</a>. Yet this is not what solves the mystery. Instead the private investigator, Auguste Dupin, correctly surmises that the best place to hide such a letter is in plain sight. He finds it on the blackmailer’s mantelpiece. </p>
<p>The story is one of the earliest and best examples of crime fiction. It suggests that science and technology are sometimes not as powerful as empathy or intuition in solving crimes. Indeed, Poe queries science throughout his writings. In one poem he <a href="https://group92016.wordpress.com/2016/02/21/what-is-the-title-by-alice-dunbar-nelson/">calls it</a> a vulture that preys on the poet’s heart, replacing the magic of a writer’s imagination with its “dull realities”. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185103/original/file-20170907-9576-25li4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185103/original/file-20170907-9576-25li4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185103/original/file-20170907-9576-25li4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1043&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185103/original/file-20170907-9576-25li4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1043&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185103/original/file-20170907-9576-25li4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1043&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185103/original/file-20170907-9576-25li4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1310&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185103/original/file-20170907-9576-25li4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1310&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185103/original/file-20170907-9576-25li4x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1310&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bloody good.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Try telling that to modern readers of crime fiction. These days, forensic scientists are one of the great staples of the genre. They are integral to everything from popular TV franchises like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0247082/">CSI</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00yzlr0">Line of Duty</a> to blockbuster names like <a href="http://www.patriciacornwell.com/about/">Patricia Cornwell</a> and <a href="https://www.jefferydeaver.com/about/qa/">Jeffrey Deaver</a> to many of the works showcasing at the <a href="https://www.bloodyscotland.com">Bloody Scotland festival in Stirling</a>. There is also something about their incredible achievements that we often overlook: they are often a long way from the reality. </p>
<h2>Criminal comforts</h2>
<p>We love crime fiction because it is reassuring. Yes, human beings are capable of evil and cruel deeds, but criminals are always caught and usually punished. This formula, as WH Auden <a href="https://harpers.org/archive/1948/05/the-guilty-vicarage/">suggested</a> in a 1948 essay on the genre, restores us to a “state of grace”. It helps us believe we are basically innocent and good, and that criminality is an aberration. </p>
<p>Forensic science amplifies this sense of comfort in crime fiction: it produces evidence that cannot lie; it brings the most cunning of criminals to justice. In a world with <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/94578.The_Gay_Science">no god</a> and <a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/lyotard.htm">no certainty</a>, these fictional scientists fill a void. They let us think that our world can be examined, analysed and rendered legible. They are modern-day magicians whose wizardry reveals indisputable truths. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185106/original/file-20170907-9545-1kv5y38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185106/original/file-20170907-9545-1kv5y38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185106/original/file-20170907-9545-1kv5y38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185106/original/file-20170907-9545-1kv5y38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185106/original/file-20170907-9545-1kv5y38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185106/original/file-20170907-9545-1kv5y38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185106/original/file-20170907-9545-1kv5y38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185106/original/file-20170907-9545-1kv5y38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Val McDermid.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/fenoswin/9428748866/in/photolist-7pUwj9-nrwHUc-fnbNxC-auJTRA-a6WAVV-auJT17-9MsomG-auGeQr-BTyNK-auJTwA-8Gtysb-BTyLG-neq88F-auGdCp-a6WCj6-auGecX-5TtQjG-4RBK8x-q46FKd-fgUF6x-auJW9A-3eRQAR-neqkaN-6Lu84G-auJRLW-VKjaft-WVg3uq-a6ZuxG-e7u6nu-5xapMb-a6WBDn-a6WBGT-a6WB9P-a6ZuAw-a6ZutS-a6ZuqN-a6WCfg-a6WBSv-Ub46Z-9vsggB-FRP2qv">Fenris Oswin</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But does forensic science really hold all the answers? Sadly, no. Val McDermid, one of the big names <a href="https://www.bloodyscotland.com/event/val-mcdermid-30-years-in-the-business-of-crime/?spektrix_bounce=true">appearing</a> at Bloody Scotland, is one of the few authors who help us understand this. In <a href="http://www.valmcdermid.com/books/out-of-bounds/">Out of Bounds</a> (2016) for example, the police are trying to determine whether a man was murdered or shot himself. </p>
<p>The amount of gunshot residue in his hand is inconclusive, we learn, and not inconsistent with a self-inflicted wound. How can scientific evidence be inconclusive? How come scientists talk of things being “not inconsistent”, rather than dealing in certainties? </p>
<p>This is where the trouble begins for forensic experts. Imagine a scientist giving evidence as a witness in court and having to explain the limitations of their field. Jurors are unlikely to appreciate that forensic evidence often relies on human interpretation; that blood spatter patterns or bite mark analysis do not tell a single, compelling and unambiguous story the way they do in books. </p>
<p>Yet the reality of the uncertainty of forensic science was recently laid bare in relation to the DNA laboratory of the office of New York City’s chief medical examiner. Seen as one of the most sophisticated forensics labs in the world, carrying out work for investigators across the US, certain scientists are <a href="http://www.govtech.com/health/Thousands-of-Criminal-Cases-in-New-York-Relied-on-Questionable-Software-Code-for-DNA-Testing.html">now claiming</a> some of its methods are unreliable. A group of prominent New York defence lawyers is calling for the inspections watchdog to carry out an investigation. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, America’s National Institute of Standards and Technology <a href="https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2017/09/speaking-error-forensic-science">recently accused</a> the forensics industry of lagging other professions when it comes to looking into and resolving errors. It said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In recent years, high visibility errors have occurred at crime labs in almost every state. These have ranged from simple mistakes, such as mislabelling evidence, to testimony that overstates the scientific evidence, to criminal acts.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In thrillers, forensic evidence almost always leads the investigative team to a satisfying conclusion. We never finish a novel thinking the killer might be exonerated when the evidence is re-examined. Even when all is as it should be, forensic scientists have their work cut out trying to communicate the complexity of the evidence, while explaining how it might be both subjective and reliable at the same time. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185133/original/file-20170907-9549-99gzdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185133/original/file-20170907-9549-99gzdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185133/original/file-20170907-9549-99gzdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=653&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185133/original/file-20170907-9549-99gzdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=653&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185133/original/file-20170907-9549-99gzdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=653&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185133/original/file-20170907-9549-99gzdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185133/original/file-20170907-9549-99gzdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185133/original/file-20170907-9549-99gzdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Not perfect.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/forensic-experts-finds-fingerprints-on-window-631148360?src=VUgm6maDgPkuZiGAI5sdPQ-1-28">zoka74</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To make their case, scientists need much more than hard facts. They need to make their expertise accessible by using similes, metaphors and narrative examples. In fact, they need to be a little like novelists – which is ironic given that they have to dispel some of the misconceptions created by novelists in the first place. </p>
<p>If there is a consolation in any of this, these experts can at least thank novelists for their public image. No matter how hard they have to work to seek and communicate knowledge, at least forensic scientists will always look glamorous while doing so. They might be the victims of our need for reassurance and certainty, but we don’t tend to treat them with the same hostility as Edgar Allan Poe.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83620/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aliki Varvogli does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If only DNA samples and microfibres made crimes as easy to solve as on CSI.Aliki Varvogli, Senior Lecturer in English and Associate Dean for Learning and Teaching, University of DundeeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.