Agatha Christie had it easy

Jonathan Creek recently returned to British TV screens and, being fans, we watched the first episode. It contained one of the worst motives for a character’s actions that I have ever encountered in a work of fiction (if you’ve not watched it but plan to do so, look away now). A terminally ill wife planted fake evidence she had been having an affair, so that when she died her much-loved husband would be less sad at losing her. It was preposterous, not a motive but a mechanism designed with the sole purpose of explaining away a mystery.

Had the rest of the programme been excellent – which it wasn’t – I would still have groaned in disappointment. Readers and audiences allow themselves to go along with fiction, suspending their disbelief at the depiction of all kinds of unlikely events. For example, I’m currently catching up with – and loving – Game of Thrones on Sky Atlantic and am captivated by a girl who can withstand fire and is raising several dragons. But this only works if writers give their characters credible motives for the way they behave.

Modern society is (thankfully!) far more forgiving than when Agatha Christie started writing. Back then, things like illegitimacy, divorce and bankruptcy were considered unacceptable and shameful. Homosexuality was illegal in Britain until 1967. Fictional characters could credibly be depicted going to desperate measures, including murder, to avoid the scandal of their private lives being made public.

Bad day at the office, dear?

These days, however, we are not so bound by convention. If a couple no longer get along, there’s little need for one of them to kill the other. Although still painful, divorce is now rightly regarded as no one’s business bar that of the people involved. And, according to the press, by 2016 the number of children born ‘out of wedlock’ (how quaint that sounds) will be greater than those born in it.

A more tolerant society is a good thing. Except for crime writers like me, who face the challenge of providing their miscreants with plausible motives. This is probably one of the reasons for the rise in popularity of psychopathic serial killers in crime fiction. They are motivated by their own internal logic, which readers still find compelling despite not sharing it.

Luckily, for all writers, while society may change, human nature never does. We’re always going to want what we can’t have and act in ways it would be wiser not to. Universal motives like love, hate, greed and jealousy will endure. A writer's skill lies in persuading an audience to buy into a character and their story so that their actions – and the motivation behind them – are believable. Whereas anyone can create a puzzle then manufacture a witless motive to explain it.

Images courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net