I didn’t plan a post for this week because most of last week was spent sitting in on a family funeral wake in that bizarre state where you're both 'on duty' and not doing anything.
I considered writing about local funeral customs (which I may do another time when I've had a chance to research) but for now, I’m going to talk some of the mystery novels I found myself thinking about.
One book that came immediately to mind was After the Funeral by Agatha Christie.
The book has extended family, old neighbours, relatives and family friends reconnecting at a funeral. You meet people you knew as a child but don’t quite remember, realising you're now older than they were when you first thought of them as “old.”
No, I didn't spot any imposters at our wake, though that might be because the astute first clue finder usually ends up dead...
But it made me realise how much the domestic helpers many depend on now have become part of the family, taking on the 'lady companion' roles that occur in Christie's world. And these everyday companions are often both closer to and more easily overlooked than relatives who rarely connect.
Also, I realised much of what we accepted as children as 'facts'about family members came from stories someone told someone who then slightly embellished and told someone else!
As we listened to memories of neighbours in Ipoh, the move down to Singapore after the racial riots, his years of teaching in NUS and SMU, all against the background of a changing Singapore and his love of mathematics and playing the mandolin I thought of Chan Ho-Kei's The Borrowed.
In The Borrowed, Inspector Kwan Chun-dok’s cases are followed in reverse over 6 novellas, starting with his most recent case (set in 2013) and moving back in time to his first case in the 60’s, at the beginning of his career.
Though each case is complete in itself, they are linked by recurring characters and themes and the evolving background of Hong Kong.
Inspector Kwan is in a coma at the start of the first book, and the reader is made very aware there are probably a good many more stories that didn't get told.
(another reminder to put down all we can while we still can!)
A small detail--the mandolin--made me think of the koto in Seishi Yokomizo’s The Honjin Murders.
Here the characters are immersed in the rituals, hierarchies and formal gatherings that follow a death where everyone is expected to behave correctly in the correct space.
It felt like a connection though it was set in 1930s Japan where feudal attitudes were (reluctantly) adjusting to modernisation, because it was where our own departed’s life started: moving from the 1930s and coming to see the digital age after passing through World War 2 and Covid.
The different stories told also made me think of Qiu Xiaolong's Death of a Red Heroine.
Where it's only after the murder of Guan Hongying that her two very different lives are revealed--the publicly celebrated role model had a hidden side.
Our different sides weren't so drastically or dramatically different--but the familiar grandfather and father figure had also been a loyal son and brother who loved sports cars and survival training...
But of all of these, the one I thought about most (maybe because it's also a longtime personal favourite) was Sujata Massey's The Widows of Malabar Hill.
Perveen Mistry negotiates rigid rules and expectations with intelligence and tactful restraint as she works within the system to do what she can for the three widows of Omar Farid.
Her focus (and the focus of the novel) on how death affects the living.
Maybe that's another reason I like murder mysteries so much. They provide a chance to explore our proximity to death and our relationship to others. And (in traditional mysteries at least) they provide a tidy resolution that we seldom get in real life.
May you all be happy, healthy and reading and writing lots!
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