When Good and Evil Stop Being Simple: Two Different Kinds of Crime Fiction

Crime stories usually begin with something clearly wrong.

Someone has been murdered. Someone has disappeared. A criminal is hurting innocent people. A detective is trying to stop them.

Where crime fiction becomes especially interesting is in what happens after that.

Some stories maintain a very clear division between the people trying to stop evil and the people committing it. The criminal may be complicated, and the hero may have flaws, but the reader rarely questions which side of the line each person occupies.

Other crime stories deliberately erase that certainty.

The hero lies. The police are corrupt. Criminals occasionally have legitimate reasons for what they do. Someone trying to protect innocent people may break the law—or do something considerably worse—in order to accomplish it.

Those stories ask a much more uncomfortable question:

What if the person doing the right thing is doing it in the wrong way?

That is the territory my upcoming novel IRONPORT occupies.

And Alexis, its central character, definitely does not live on the comfortable side of the line.

The Traditional Crime Hero: Someone Has to Represent Order

A large portion of classic crime fiction is built around restoring order.

A crime disrupts the normal world. The investigator enters, discovers what happened, identifies the guilty party, and—in one form or another—justice is restored.

Few characters represent this tradition better than Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie's legendary detective.

Poirot is not physically imposing. He does not kick down doors or intimidate criminals with violence. His weapons are observation, logic, psychology, and an extraordinary ability to understand human behavior.

Most importantly, Poirot believes very strongly in justice.

The murderer may have suffered.

The victim may have been unpleasant.

There may even be circumstances that make the crime understandable.

But understanding why someone committed murder does not automatically excuse it.

Poirot investigates the crime, identifies the murderer, and brings the truth into the open.

The world may have become temporarily chaotic, but Poirot attempts to put it back together.

That makes him almost the opposite of Alexis.

Alexis Isn't Trying to Restore the System

Alexis does not enter Ironport believing that the system simply needs help solving the occasional crime.

She has far less confidence in the system itself.

She is a former soldier carrying grief, anger, and a great deal of emotional damage. She possesses the training and physical ability to intervene when she sees something happening—and she is not particularly interested in waiting for permission.

Alexis wants innocent people protected.

That sounds unquestionably heroic.

The problem comes when you begin asking how far she is willing to go to accomplish it.

Alexis does not always see the law and justice as the same thing.

That distinction is where her story becomes morally complicated.

Poirot discovers a killer and believes the proper institutions should deal with that person.

Alexis might look at the same criminal and wonder whether those institutions are capable of dealing with them at all.

And if her answer is no?

She may decide the problem has become hers.

Poirot Wants the Truth. Alexis Wants Results.

That difference creates two completely different forms of crime fiction.

Poirot's greatest victory is often revelation.

He gathers everyone together, reconstructs what happened, exposes the lies, and identifies the guilty person. The intellectual puzzle resolves itself.

Alexis is not interested in gathering suspects into a drawing room.

She is interested in stopping someone.

Preferably before they hurt somebody else.

That makes her approach much more immediate—and considerably more dangerous.

Because once an individual decides that the normal rules are no longer working, another question appears:

Who gave that person the authority to decide what justice looks like?

Alexis might have excellent intentions.

That does not automatically make every decision she makes correct.

And that is exactly the point.

When the Hero Is Clearly Good

There is something deeply satisfying about traditional crime heroes.

Characters such as Poirot give readers stability.

However complicated the mystery becomes, we trust the person investigating it.

The detective may make mistakes, but their fundamental purpose is rarely in doubt.

They want the truth.

They want the guilty identified.

They want innocent people protected.

There is comfort in that structure.

The audience gets to stand beside the detective and examine evil from a relatively safe moral distance.

We may wonder who committed the crime.

We usually don't have to wonder whether the detective is becoming just as dangerous as the criminal.

That kind of crime fiction can focus heavily on the mystery itself.

Who did it?

How?

Why?

What clue did we miss?

The moral answer is generally much easier.

Murder is wrong.

The murderer must be stopped.

Justice should prevail.

When the Hero Lives in the Gray Area

Morally ambiguous crime fiction changes the questions.

Instead of simply asking who committed the crime, the reader may begin asking:

Was the victim actually innocent?

Are the police any better than the criminals?

Is revenge ever justified?

Can a person break the law in order to protect people?

When does violence become necessary?

And who gets to decide?

The protagonist becomes part of the mystery.

We aren't only watching what happens.

We are judging the person we're following.

Sometimes we agree with them.

Sometimes we don't.

Sometimes we may discover that we are rooting for them even while knowing we probably shouldn't.

That tension can make morally gray protagonists extremely compelling.

The Most Dangerous Difference Between Poirot and Alexis

There is another major distinction between the two.

Poirot trusts himself to discover the truth.

Alexis has to trust herself to decide what happens afterward.

That is a much heavier burden.

If Poirot makes a mistake while investigating, he may accuse the wrong person. That possibility is precisely why evidence and careful reasoning matter so much to him.

When someone like Alexis makes a mistake, consequences can happen much faster.

She has military training.

She is physically powerful.

She carries weapons.

She is capable of turning a decision into action almost immediately.

That makes emotional control incredibly important.

And Alexis is carrying enough anger and grief to make that control difficult.

Her greatest strength—her ability to act when other people hesitate—can therefore become one of her greatest weaknesses.

Clear Morality Doesn't Mean Simple Characters

None of this means characters like Poirot are simplistic.

Quite the opposite.

Traditional detectives can confront extremely complicated moral situations.

Agatha Christie's stories frequently explore jealousy, greed, revenge, love, class, family secrets, and the strange ways ordinary people justify terrible behavior.

The difference is that the detective usually remains a relatively stable moral center while everyone else moves around them.

Morally gray stories sometimes remove that center entirely.

Everyone has an agenda.

Everyone has secrets.

Everyone believes they have reasons for what they are doing.

Even the protagonist may be unreliable—not necessarily because she lies to the reader, but because her anger, grief, and personal history influence the way she sees the world.

That is much closer to the kind of crime story I wanted Ironport to become.

Ironport Is a City Full of Definitions of Justice

One of the themes running through Ironport is that almost everyone believes they have some justification for their actions.

Police officers believe they understand what must be done to keep order.

Politicians believe they know how to save the city.

Criminals find ways to justify their choices.

People trying to change Ironport may disagree completely about what that change should look like.

And Alexis has her own definition.

That doesn't necessarily mean hers is the correct one.

As Alexis herself observes:

“Everyone had their own definition of that word. Criminals. Cops. Politicians. Soldiers.”

That idea lies very close to the heart of the novel.

The frightening thing about evil isn't always that someone wakes up believing they are evil.

Often, people convince themselves they are doing exactly what needs to be done.

Which Kind of Crime Story Is Better?

Neither.

They simply provide different experiences.

A traditional detective story can give us the satisfaction of watching intelligence and justice overcome deception.

A morally gray crime story gives us something messier.

It makes the reader participate.

You aren't simply asking whether the protagonist will win.

You may find yourself asking whether you still want them to.

And sometimes the most interesting moment comes when you realize the answer is still yes.

Even after they crossed a line you thought mattered.

That is where Alexis lives.

Not comfortably on the side of good.

Not comfortably on the side of evil.

But somewhere in between, trying to convince herself that she still knows the difference.

IRONPORT by Jason J. Cross

Coming Soon to Amazon.