Garry Ryan - Conditioned for Mayhem

Mayhem. Now there’s a word loaded with meaning.

It can be lots of fun, even life affirming. You know, laughing in the face of events that threaten your life.

Canadians have an advantage when it comes to mayhem. We know it intimately. Every winter we become reacquainted when a blizzard blows horizontal snow and creates all sorts of chaos. Then there’s that icy winds to suck the life out of you. The next time you find yourself coming inside from one of those storms, look around. People become more animated because the blizzard changes the routine, adds energy and makes us all survivors.

A survivor like Lisbeth Salander. What would Larsson’s book be without the mayhem surrounding Salander? She’s at the eye of the storm that will change the lives of almost every other character in the novel. It’s invigorating for the reader to be a witness to that chaos.

Salander is a survivor just like we are after summer thunder clouds roll in with their violent winds, lightning, bone rattling thunder, hail and falling trees.

Larsson adds killers Martin Vanger and Alexander Zalachenko to increase the intensity of the storm.

We experience those savage storms that interrupt power, make transportation impossible, isolate us for a day or a week and we find ways to survive.

Salander is made more alive by the storm and creates some weather of her own. Who among us wouldn’t like to fight back against the mayhem we encounter by creating some?

This is where our writing comes in. Writers are able to create, shape, describe, witness and survive the storms created by our imaginations and shaped by our realities. When we’re really lucky, we are along for the ride. The story and its characters take over and we are in the eye, watching the mayhem created when the story – like the storm – takes on a life of its own. All we can do is write everything down and enjoy the ride.

Garry Ryan was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, where he lives today. He received a B.Ed. and a Diploma in Educational Psychology from the University of Calgary, and taught English and Creative Writing to junior high and high school students before retiring in 2009.

Garry Ryan’s next novel Blackbirds is due for release in September 2012.

www.garryryan.ca

Follow the Money with Colleen Cross

Your Money or Your Life

Money and Murder seem to go hand-in-hand. When greed is part of the motive, catching the murderer can involve more than just the immediate crime scene. Forensic accountants often play a key role in the effort to trace money, uncover hidden stashes, or even expose a suspect’s money problems.

Insurance fraud often involves murder. Not much has changed since Mary Anne Cotton offed her entire family and a few unfortunate acquaintances in Victorian England. The scheme is always the same: insure a person’s life, kill them and then collect on the policy.

A Little Arsenic for Your Tea?

Mary Anne Cotton managed to poison three husbands, one lover, one friend, her mother and all twelve of her children before the game was up. After she spent the insurance proceeds, she would line up her next victim and take out another policy. Why did it take eighteen deaths before someone connected the dots? We’ll likely never know.

Finally the insurance company questioned the number of deaths from “gastric flu”. That prevented the victim tally from increasing. Cotton hanged before she could line up husband #4.

The Black Widows

More recently, in Los Angeles, two women in their seventies took in homeless men, drugged and then ran over them. The staged hit and runs looked like an accident. The ladies had taken large life insurance policies out on the men. They always waited a few months before claiming the proceeds to avoid suspicion. They were eventually caught, but not before two men lost their lives.

With modern technology, it is much more difficult to get away with murder. But as long as there’s money involved, people still try.

When crime scene evidence doesn’t point directly to the perpetrators, find out where the estate money goes, or who is otherwise enriched. Nine times in ten, following the money leads to the killer. It’s a common theme for forensic accountant and fraud investigator Kat Carter in my book, Exit Strategy. 

Colleen Cross is the author of Exit Strategy, book one in the Katerina Carter suspense series. Game Theory, book two in the series, will be published in late 2012. Colleen is an accountant and lives near Vancouver, B.C. Drop by her website and blog at http://colleencross.com or follow her on Twitter @colleenxcross.