Crime Scene Reconstruction, Literary Scene Deconstruction

 When a murderer stages a crime scene, they are doing it for one of two reasons:

1) They may simply be trying to throw off the police from the evidence trail, such as stripping the victim's clothes to suggest a sexual component of the crime when no such act occurred

2) They are setting the police a puzzle to solve, over and above the identity of who killed the victim.

There is a further possible scenario, that the killer's psychological predilections are strong enough to demand the scene is arranged to fit with their fantasy that likely to drove them to murder in the first place, such a posing the deceased in a humiliating manner, as an expression of the killer's sense of superiority, or wish to mark the victim as 'deserving' of degradation beyond taking their life. 

A dead body is processed for clues as to the cause of death. Corporeality speaking to materiality, as science brings its analytical tools to bear. Evidence at the scene can be anything from bullet fragments, blood spatter, discarded cigarettes through to DNA traces and transferred fibres or plant material. All derive from the world of the material. However, in a staged scene, the realm of the symbolic is also engaged. The symbolic is not analysable by the same hard and fast facts as material evidence yielded by science. Rather, they are very much accessed through interpretation.

In my latest novel, "The Death Of The Author (In Triplicate)", there is a staged murder scene which is littered with deliberate symbols set up by the killer. To solve his or her identity, the detectives must first unravel the meaning of the field of symbols. Within the four elements of the material world, as constituted by the ancients all the way through to alchemists, that is fire (ashes), earth (garden soil), water (a jacuzzi) and air (a greenhouse), are discovered statues of gods and idols from every human mythology. Each divine is interred in their appropriate element. Gods of thunder, wind and cyclones are found in the greenhouse. Fertility and harvest gods in the potting shed's mound of soil. 

The latest scientific forensic techniques are being asked to go up hard against ancient belief and the precursor of science in the form of alchemy. Of course alchemy's primary search for the philosopher's stone, which would supposedly turn base metal into gold, was a fool's errand and yet many of the processes and equipment employed, such as boiling admixtures in glass retorts, led the way to many discoveries that helped usher in the modern world and modern chemistry. Many of the statues uncovered no longer have adherents and believers, rather humbly now just existing as exhibits in a museum. What is the murderer trying to say with this symbology? They believe themself much smarter than the forces of law and order, hence the setting out of the challenge of a puzzle. And yet they also want that cleverness, that self-perceived genius, to be acknowledged. 

In many ways, all fiction is a form of detective fiction. What is a novel if not a series of clues? A code to be cracked. The author carefully layers their work with whatever it is they want the reader to uncover and take away from their book. If it is made too obvious, the book is likely to be a poor read. If too oblique and difficult to discover, then the author's intentions go largely unfulfilled. In this way, the author shares a facet with the murderer above; they want their cleverness acknowledged. For the murderer it might be a boast or a public taunting of the police that brings about their downfall, as it gives away who they are and how to find them. For the author, it is talking about their book in interviews, struggling between the poles of revealing their art. as against not giving too much away. 

“The Death Of The Author (In Triplicate)”  is available direct from the publisher Corona\Samizdat  

The Death Of The Author (In Triplicate)

 

My new novel "The Death Of The Author (In Triplicate) is out now direct from the publishers Corona\Samizdat.

It's a novel in 3 parts, with a Russian Dolls set of authors responsible for the production of the previous part. Part one is a police procedural/mystery thriller. A Senior Investigations Officer is on the way to a fresh murder and is having a crisis of faith as he questions both the nature of justice and the role material evidence plays in it. Part 2 is a heated dialogue between a widow and a literary agent as they argue over who should own an unfinished manuscript of the widow's late author husband, a battle for the memory and soul of the dead man. Part 3 sees an author having just completed his novel, tidying away all his noted stuck on the wall and clearing up his desk, as his thoughts turn towards the marketing of his book and trying to anticipate the response of critics and interview questions he'll likely be asked. As he determines not to reveal the magic behind being a creative person, the very mundane nature of sitting in a room typing on a keyboard betrays his intention and serves to demystify the mystery of thriller writing. 

I call it a novel of crime scene reconstruction and a literary scene deconstruction. 

Here are 3 short videos discussing some of the key themes. 

Justice is an abstract concept that doesn't exist anywhere else in Nature. It is codified in written laws and cases of infractions of those laws are tried on the basis of material witnesses and material evidence, which represent an entirely different register of language from an abstract concept.

                                         

The relationship of abstract justice to material evidence underpinning it, is resonant of the age old phenomenological inquiry into the nature of reality: the materialist versus idealist debate. Is there a single, verifiable objective reality rooted in matter, or is everything ultimately determined by our language, naming and idea of things? In the novel, the Senior Investigation officer is having a crisis of faith in accepting the rules of evidence as being sufficient to prove anything.

The third and final section of the novel, is through the eyes of a third person author who has just completed writing his book and is thinking about its critical reception and the likely interview questions he will be asked about the process of writing it. Behind his grappling with these questions and revealing his own thoughts, lies the true first person author, that being Marc Nash who wrote part three as well as parts one and two and the tension between the truth of the author in part three with Nash's own personal truth.

Author reading from the opening of the book. 

Here are some quotes from the book.

Part 1: The Senior Detective is having a crisis of faith...

             

"Like the 2011 riots, using Blackberries in order to organise riots for looting Blackberries. Man, we had both our hands and testicles tied behind our backs for that infantifada. Even so, we did secure our dreary, desultory requital sure enough. Months spent scanning faces on surveillance footage from the shops they hadn’t pillaged, plus more numbskullery advertising their ill-gotten gains on social media. Our techies palpating facial recognition software while we, the ones who had formed the anaemic thin blue arterial lines on the night, twiddle our singed fingers, as they swipe right on Match-dot-Con. We took the streets back, sat there behind our desks. The thin end of the fibre optic wedge, where we are adjuncts, mere auxiliaries of technology".

 

“When is a gun not a gun? When it’s a replica. But if a replica is pointed at a human target in a hold-up, then does it not operate with the exact same ramification of a gun? And further, when that replica has been retooled to make it functional, then it’s no longer pseudo, mock, nor a simulacrum, (all words I’ve heard defence QCs {pseudo, mock, or simulacra human beings} use in court), since now it actually fires bullets & can draw blood. Apparently, you can even manufacture one on a 3-D printer. Oh Mercy Mercy Me as Marvin used to sing. And that poor beautiful bastard was shot to death too. On April Fool’s Day, in the year of Orwell’s “1984”. Can there have been a more ill-omened date on which to die?” 

“Forensics, I have come to realise, is phenomenology writ large. Or microscopically small as is more often the case. I do not instinctively know what looks out of place. Any objects in front of me could bear significance. Initially I have to make myself take notice of them all and not filter a single one out as quotidian, neutral and innocent. I have to crowbar into my consciousness, an awareness of everything that populates a scene. A sort of mental cubism, as I plot the lie and locus of everything simultaneously. This is a field through and through, yet with most things remaining unintegrated with one another. This is not a web of connection of objects. 

Part 3: Someone seemingly having a better day is the author who has just completed his novel.

"He reached for the wire mesh bin beneath the desk. It was empty. His wife must have emptied it. How she would have honourably separated out the recyclables, the coke cans and half-measure spirit bottles, from the lolly sticks and cigarette stubs. Anything that basically had made an appearance on the traffic calming roundabout scene, first made their bow in his litter bin. All writers adopted the methods of Kaiser Söze. Whether they cared to admit it or not." 

"Oh god, there was also the prospect of having to get active on his social media accounts once again. Bad enough trying to compose a two hundred word blurb. On Twitter he had just two hundred and eighty characters. With spaces. On Instagram he had to make it so that someone viewing it on their phone, wouldn’t be obliged to scroll down and risk contracting repetitive strain injury. Unlike him, typing away eight hours a day for almost a year to deliver a novel. Wrists of steel. All the fun of the fair, of perpetual swiping right on an app, from shoes, through take-away dishes, to lust at first pixelated sight. How could any work of literature compete?"

He hadn’t experienced much in the way of transference with her, save for the transfer of funds from his bank account into hers. He could console himself that at least he had unsettled her momentarily from her upright (uptight?) poise, when he challenged her to specify how many sessions in her professional experience, it would take to cauterise, suture and heal the gash of a therapist-shaped hole in his life? Turned out to be a poor choice of imagery. Since the imagery of wounds had been invoked, Kafka was inevitably brought up. Which itself allowed her to sweep in with the whole Oedipal thing between Franz and his father and how he himself obviously related to that. By what means had he become embroiled in a literary discussion with his therapist? Since he received fees, (or more accurately expenses), for appearing on literary panels, he should be charging her for his expertise, for that session at least”. 

 

No authors were harmed in the making of this book

an endorsement from Kurt Vonnegut Jnr (puppet)

 

Reviews:

Never Imitate Book Blog "Murder, death and betrayal are mere ingredients around which Nash cooks his literary feast. The starter may appear to be a police procedural but this proves a red herring, an opening to something completely different."

Bob The Bookerer video review (8mins 37 secs in)

New Novel Cover Reveal

Before the end of September, my new paranormal police procedural dystopian novel will be published on Amazon Kindle. It's very different for me to be writing a genre novel, (or several genres perhaps), but it's a book studded with literary values in the manner of China Mieville.

Over the next few posts I'll be trailing it with some videos and other extras, but for now here's the cover designed for me by Appleseed Images - @littleappleseed on Twitter

I think she's done a brilliant job, with both the central striking image and the subtle flourishes and cues niched within it. And my author name reversed in the glass bottle refracted through the alcohol. What hard bitten detective doesn't have a central relationship to alcohol? Only my detective isn't actually a policeman, alcohol as exotic as Mezcal is hard to get hold of in the dystopia caused by the economic meltdown of nations and his reliance on alcohol is fundamental to the plot of the novel...

Help!

I'd be very grateful if you wonderful guys out there would help me come to a decision what to name my new genre book. I'll list the possible titles and if you could vote your fave in the comment section. At the bottom I'll give a brief blurb as well, so you can actually cast 2 votes, one just on title itself (grab factor) and a second if necessary given the outline of the book.

many thanks

Marc x

The Candidate Titles are as follows:

1) The Third Eye Policeman

2) Cuban Decay

3) Procedural Death

4) The After-Image Man

5) The Sum of The Parts

6) The Death Of Procedure

7) An Eye For An Eye For An Eye

8) Dead To The World

The Blurb:

You can tell a lot about a society by its murderers... Simon Moralee has the gift of decocting the faces of murderers from the last images witnessed by their victims. His clear-up rate is 100%, but such is the dystopic society's slide into predation, how much is his work making any kind of difference? The Police minders assigned to him have nothing to do except cultivate their resentment; for with Simon's advent, all police procedure has become redundant. But when a criminal mastermind with his own psychic talents comes hunting for Simon, a deadly game is joined.

I started doing #fridayflash when I put all other writing aside in order to promote and market my self-published novel. But as you probably all know, the ideas don't stop throwing themselves at you like wanton strumpets and flash writing in small bites seemed the perfect solution to feeding the piranha fish nipping at my synapses. Well it's been a year now with just one week missed and the art of flash has taught me a lot about writing. But I yearn to return to the longer novel form. I've got 3 other novels all in finished drafts, but can't decide how to proceed with them. Then there is the labyrinthine WIP I set aside at 40,000 words in, the time the published novel came out. But the twin prompts of NANO (which I'm only shadowing, not doing formally) and approaching my life-long nemesis of genre fiction have combined to give me the solution - a wholly new book and yes, a whole new direction for me as it's genre-based! Having started it on Sunday last, here's the opening 1000 words serving for my #fridayflash this week.

Thanks.

The two outriders slew their front wheels across the gravel, each throwing up a little cloud of brown dust. There was no other motion as the particles forged their sedate, wispy descent back to earth. Only once this tiny portion of the landscape had been allowed to resettle itself, did the two men faceless behind their mirror visors permit themselves to stir. They flicked their kick stands and adjusted their body weight to let their bikes sag from under them as the levers bore the burden of steel and chrome. Still in perfect unison like synchronsied swimmers, the men dismount and remove their leather gloves. One stares ahead of him, while the other surveyed where they had just come from. He spies the outline of a sleek saloon slowly growing larger as it gobbles up his own bike tracks, like Theseus retracing his route through the labyrinth marked by string. He briefly looks over his shoulder at his partner, the statuary symmetry between the pair finally sundered. The other curls his index finger tip to tip with his thumb and jags the 'aok' gesture back at him. They await the arrival of the car.

The car's tyres throw up a quartet of dust nebulae, out-muscling and out-trumping that of the outriders. But these brumes dissipate and disperse as if the car had wanted to spite their reunification with the ground. Behind the dark tint of its windows, the car sits utterly still, like a cat ready to pounce in the long grass. Not even the slowing revolutions and cooling of the extinguished engine dared broach the bated breath of the moment. Finally the tension is broken by the passenger window being cracked with the apologetic whine of low voltage electricity. The nearest outrider marches stiffly up to the car, ducks down to fill the purview of the voided glass. His voice little more inflected than the dull drone of the lowered window. He rights himself erect, steps a couple of paces back, then opens the door as if trying to die stamp himself. From within the interior, one trousered leg swivels, flexes and braces itself against the ground. Followed by a second. The further outrider can only see a pair of black leather shoes beneath the plimsoll line of the open car door. Virtually every day they play out this same scene in different settings, but never with any variation in the actions, the angularity and the algebra. A natural choreography evinced between men of rank.

The leather shoes pivot and the plimsoll line sinks as the mass extrudes itself from the upholstery. The outrider muses his habitual bafflement as to how so huge a bulk can be squeezed into such a confined space. The start of the old joke about how you get a family of elephants inside a Mini plays through his mind, but as usual he can never reclaim the punchline since the man mountain is barking queries at him that demand his attention. His partner is pointing beyond and the gelatinous mass of the superior's head makes an elliptical motion that could be either nod or shake, such are its indeterminate boundaries. Damn, it's happened again. The rear seat passenger has slipped out unnoticed and unremarked. Certainly the car's chassis never even dipped half an inch. For a big cheese, the luminary was awfully small in stature. Mousy. Bird-like. As gauzy as the dust cloud pressed out under his bike wheel. The superior is clearly exasperated that yet again the VIP has emerged on his own cognizance and not at that of himself who is supposed to be running the show. His bear of an arm extends, virtually eclipsing the whole of the cock sparrow. "We haven't established the security of the area yet". The VIP passenger approaches the superior officer and limbos under the outstretched arm without having to crook his body at all. "We've got a forensics team working at the site haven't we?" The larger man's redundant blockading arm drops with an audible displacement of air. "Nobody is trying to wipe out a forensics team. There's nothing to be gained from it". The large man moved swiftly in defiance of his girth, in order to interpose himself in front of Tiny Tim who had started to walk further into the gravel.

The smaller man could not help but be impressed with the man's dedication. If there was a sniper out there and he discharged a round into his covering minder, he fancied the man might deflate like letting the air out of a blow-up balloon. Presumably that's why he had been given the detail. But this whole rigmarole, outriders, bullet-proof saloon, tinted windows, minder, it just made him so uncomfortable. Giving the misleading impression that he himself was some kind of dignitary. When there was never any way to dignify these scenes he was charged with attending. Death scenes.

Fortunately, in the most miserable of circumstances that is, the present circumstance appeared to be in so blighted a spot, there was no crowd of bystanders. No members of his personal fan club to cheerlead him in his work, when all that was called for was a respectful quiet for the deceased. His presence usually engendered a delirious crowd which soon managed to turn every murder scene into a red carpet vigil. When the red carpet was usually woven of blood. But then there were flibbertigibbets at hangings of old, so maybe he shouldn't be so condemnatory. No Press today either, which was a blessed relief. Sometimes they deigned to turn their cameras on the scene of crime, but mostly they didn't even bother. They tended to be the celebrity pap smearers, rather than from the crime desk. Always their telephoto lens were pointed at him, Simon Moralee. Queasy superstar of the criminal investigation world. Maybe that's also why "Jellyneck" Morton had been selected as his minder, to block the clear shots of camera lenses as much as rifles, though the department was never averse to the unfailingly good publicity Simon raked in on their behalf.

Simon Moralee, the man who always got his man (or woman). The man possessed of a unique ability, which made him god's gift to the profession. Which every day made him want to turn his back on it all. If he ever took that fatal step, then indeed he would require a protection squad. For the populace would tear him limb from limb in such circumstance. And in passing over into death, he would be able to finger every one of his killers as his last act on earth. Providing a neat circularity to his life. Back to that moment his gift-curse first announced itself to him. When at seven years old he cupped his mother's lifeless head in his arms. And had a searingly clear image of her killer revealed to him.