5 Crime Novels that Play with Time
In many ways, the traditional whodunit already has a reverse narrative. In the opening chapter there is often a corpse—the body in the library, say—and then we, the reader, are introduced to the prime suspects, and to the detective that will solve this crime. By the end of the novel we are given the complete story, clued in to the events that led up to that lifeless body that arrived at chapter one.
I was thinking of this when I began writing Kill Your Darlings, a murder story that advances backwards through time, beginning now, and ending in 1982. It didn’t strike me as a radical reinvention of form so much as an homage to the time-jumping that is a regular feature of murder mysteries. The past influences the present, and the seeds of crime are often planted long before they flower.
Here are five crime novels that, in one way or another, play with the idea of time. I was also influenced by several other pieces of non-crime work, most notably a Harold Pinter play called Betrayal, and Elizabeth Jane Howard’s debut novel, The Long View, both of which study relationships by going backwards through time, a process that reveals the nature of tragedy by ending their stories before the carnage has even begun. This is ultimately what I hoped to do with Kill Your Darlings show the arc of a marriage alongside the ripples of a terrible crime, and by going backwards, try to understand how everything went so wrong.
In the early books of this brilliant series, Matthew Scudder is an alcoholic ex-cop who basically operates a private investigation business from his local bar. In later books, Scudder gets sober but continues to solve grisly crimes that elude the police. This book comes early in the series but bridges the gap between the soused Scudder and the sober one. It floats in time across a decade of Scudder’s life, chronicling not just cases he’s solved, but the toil of alcohol, and the small comings and goings of New York’s dive bar scene. It’s elegiac and gritty at the same time.
About the Author
Peter Swanson is the New York Times bestselling author of The Kind Worth Killing, winner of the New England Society Book Award and finalist for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger; Her Every Fear, an NPR book of the year; and Eight Perfect Murders, a New York Times bestseller, among others. His books have been translated into 30 languages. He lives on the North Shore of Massachusetts, where he is at work on his next novel.
What happens next has everything to do with what happened before. The story of Wendy and Thom’s marriage is told in reverse, moving backward through time to witness key moments from the couple’s lives—their fiftieth birthday party, buying their home, Jason’s birth, the mysterious death of a work colleague—all painting a portrait of a marriage defined by a single terrible act they plotted together many years ago. Eventually we learn the details of what Thom and Wendy did in their early twenties, a secret that has kept them bound together through the length of their marriage. But its power over them is fraying, and each of them begins to wonder if they would be better off making sure their spouse carries their secrets to the grave.
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