The butler did it
In a new murder mystery series, the twist is that it’s the butler who solves the crime, not commits it.
August 16th, 2024
Award-winning author, Susan Juby, lives on Vancouver Island, where she teaches creative writing at Vancouver Island University.
In Susan Juby’s latest book, Helen Thorpe, a Buddhist butler, helps a reckless influencer, Cartier Hightower, navigate a series of bizarre murders and social media chaos at a secluded Chilcotin ranch.
by John Moore
“The butler did it” became a running joke in murder mystery novels and films after Mary Roberts Rinehart’s 1930 novel, The Door, shocked readers by having the efficient self-effacing butler turn out to be the killer. It was a new and shockingly democratic twist in a genre where main characters were almost always members of the upper classes with a few servants playing minor roles.
Vancouver Island author Susan Juby puts fresh spin on the old joke by making the butler the investigator who solves the crime. In her first mystery novel, Mindful of Murder, (HarperCollins, 2022), Juby introduces Helen Thorpe, a former Buddhist nun turned professional butler, whose experience and training enhances her powers of observation while giving her the ability to remain calm and compassionate as everyone around her is losing their marbles and someone is resorting to murder to achieve questionable “life goals.”
In Mindful of Murder the suspects are potential beneficiaries of the will of a wealthy woman who devoted her life to creating a centre for “spiritual renewal” on one of the salubrious Gulf Islands. The centre’s teachings are a predictable New Age potpourri of yoga, meditation, expressive dance and flower arranging, which would-be beneficiaries are required to undergo in hopes of getting control of the centre’s valuable real estate or the owner’s considerable fortune. Since they’re a typical bunch of mostly dissolute parasites, second-gen, wanna-be rich with more entitlement than money, it’s a sendup of the traditional “reading of the will” scene.
A Meditation on Murder book jacket
Since only the rich can afford butlers, Juby’s follow-up, A Meditation on Murder, is also inevitably set in a world of “haves” and “have-nots.” Insulated by privilege and expensive lawyers, the world of the rich has been the hunting ground of fictional private detectives and amateur sleuths since Sherlock Holmes was cranking a seven-percent solution of cocaine in his flat on Baker Street. The poor almost always kill out of desperation, as in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. The homicidal rich are usually motivated by money and power and the desire for more of both, which makes them more complex and more interesting.
In A Meditation on Murder, the cast of suspects is the most repellent variant yet to evolve from homo sapiens: the social media influencer. Content in her current position with the Levines, a kindly philanthropic Vancouver couple, Helen is asked by her clients to help one of their friends, widowed shipping magnate Archie Hightower. Hightower is a bully who gets things done by shouting at people, including his motherless daughter Cartier.
Trying to invent herself, Cartier has hooked up with a creepy gang of influencers calling themselves Deep State. They stage raves, conceptual art happenings, dabble in fashion and perform dangerous stunts, all videoed and posted on their media platforms. They spend almost every waking moment looking at their phones. Trying to assist Cartier to lead a less disordered life, Helen is almost out of her depth, confronted by such a digitally fabricated lifestyle.
When members of the Deep State start dying for real and “anti-social” media turns its demonizing power against Cartier, who possesses no personal resources to defend herself, Helen is forced to take action to protect the frightened lost child inside a shallow and superficially ungrateful young woman. Spiriting Cartier away to an isolated Chilcotin ranch cut off from internet service, Helen provokes a confrontation that exposes the person most likely to profit from the death of Deep State. As ancient Roman lawyers asked in murder cases, cui bono? Who benefits? Or as we say these days, “follow the money.”
Mystery lovers may note that the plots of both Juby’s first two Helen Thorpe novels are resolved during cathartic storms. It may be a tongue in cheek nod to the Gospel of St. Agatha: nothing isolates and heightens dramatic tension among a group of suspects like a whopping great storm that reflects the emotional turmoil of the characters, especially when it disempowers them by having the lights and their electronic gadgets abandon them in primal darkness. It’s an old reliable dramatic device.
Susan Juby at the Leacock Medal Gala dinner and winner announcement with author Zarqa Nawaz.
Susan Juby’s decision to write a series of murder mysteries about a butler may seem a tad quirky for the author of a dozen popular novels for young and adult readers and a Leacock Medal for Humour winner. Not so much. Sales of mainstream literary novels have been dropping off like a blind date’s interest for decades while readers of once-deprecated genre fiction, especially young adult novels and murder/suspense thrillers still prefer a good book to Netflix. Authors as disparate as Susan Juby and Jim Christy have recognized the enduring appeal of the murder mystery.
Murder mysteries offer as many opportunities for character creation, social criticism, ironic observation and humour as any form of fiction. Maybe more. Unlike mainstream novels that often wander off the trail into narrative bogs, mysteries demand a plot that, however tangled, has to be resolved before you get to write The End. In the old days, we called that a “story.” 9781443469524
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John Moore reads and writes from Garibaldi Highlands.
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