Today is “The Ides of March,” the March 15 date on which Roman dictator Julius Caesar was assassinated in the year 44 BC. So, I’m going do a word salad rather than a Caesar salad discussing some memorable murders in literature — while trying to avoid too many spoilers in the specific details.
Murders are of course awful, even as they’re sometimes almost merited for righteous revenge reasons. Whatever the motives behind them, they can be a key plot device and make for painfully dramatic reading.
One novel’s title that literally telegraphs a killing is Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Written in a journalistic reconstruction fashion, the book is far from the author’s best work but still interesting.
Also quite interesting is Albert Camus’ The Stranger and its puzzling murder by the novel’s detached protagonist.
The brutal double-killing early in the iconic Crime and Punishment is…iconic. Then we spend the rest of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s psychological novel observing Rodion Raskolnikov’s angst, his attempts to justify his action, his worry about capture, and more.
Other novels with multiple murders? We’ve read a few — including Agatha Christie’s classic And Then They Were None and its many dispatched characters. They deserve some punishment, but do they deserve dying? Murders, of course, are a staple of mysteries, detective fiction, and thrillers.
Totally innocent is Black teen Donte Drumm, who’s wrongly accused of killing a white high school girl in John Grisham’s The Confession. Will that murder by someone else lead to another murder — the execution of Drumm — by racist authorities?
Which reminds me of the unjust killings by law enforcement of characters in novels such as Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give (another Black teen is the victim) and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (a white man is the victim).
Retaliatory killings? We see righteous ones in Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, Erich Maria Remarque’s Arch of Triumph, and Percival Everett’s James — the last book a reimagining of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Speaking of Twain, he wrote about the execution of a real-life heroine in Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc — a novel in the historical-fiction genre also inhabited by Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace and its double-murder.
If we include genocide in this discussion, various grim novels come to mind — including Holocaust ones such as William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice and Herman Wouk’s War and Remembrance.
In the short-story realm, there many murder-in-the-mix tales to choose from: “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell, “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe, etc., etc.
Your thoughts about, and examples of, this topic?
I will probably be offline much of tomorrow (Monday, March 16) while in New York City but will reply to comments after I return. 🙂
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Dave Astor on Literature 
An apt topic for The Ides of March, Dave. Sad to say, I’ve read only a few of the novels you mention. Though I can’t recall any memorable murders in literature, I’ve found the murder of a child or a beloved character the most impactful.
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I see you mention the old Alfred Hitchcock Presents in the comments. That show is exactly what your topic reminded me of…such unusual murders or twisty outcomes of those deaths. I loved that show, even as a kid. No surprise that my favorite genre ended up being mystery:)
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Thank you, Becky! I saw several reruns of that Hitchcock TV series years ago, and “unusual” and “twisty” are two very accurate words to describe the plots! Maybe not as transcendent a series as “The Twilight Zone,” but still darn good. I can see why you were a fan.
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An excellent topic, Dave, and no less than I’d expect of you. To my shame I haven’t read many of the books you list, although ‘The Stranger’ was a favourite and I have ‘Crime and Punishment’ waiting in my TBR. ‘Julius Caesar’ was of course a teen school read, and the subject of ‘justified killing’ was something that occupied the minds of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Jacobean Revenge Tragedy was very much about the subject, especially where the murder victim was a ruler or other person of great power. Thomas Middleton’s ‘The Revenger’s Tragedy’ concerns a protagonist whose love was murdered some years before by the Duke, who’s also the ruler of their land. The revenge plot succeeds, but the revenger too meets his death – the feeling of the times being that it wasn’t a good thing to show somebody killing a ruler and getting away with it. That conflict continues today – note the recent killing in the USA of the CEO of a healthcare conglomerate, concerning which I’ve seen demonstrations on TV by those who feel the killer ought to be freed as the company failed in its duty to many who suffered and even died due to their seemingly heartless putting of profit over people. The problem is, of course, that a murder was committed, and letting the killer off would set a bad precedent. And of course I’ve gone off topic; but art of course mirrors real life, and vice-versa, which is why murder in literature is such an engrossing topic. Rant over. Catch you again later, Dave. Have a good week. 🙂
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Thank you, Laura! Art indeed mirrors real life, which is definitely one reason why there’s so much murder and other deaths in literature.
That killing of the UnitedHealthcare exec you mentioned does bring up all kinds of issues. It was wrong for him to be murdered, yet the decisions he and his company made to deny medical benefits to countless people in the interest of maximizing profits led to thousands of deaths. Reminds me a bit of the debate between terrorism vs. state terrorism.
Which also reminds me of the horrific recent U.S. bombing of that girls’ school in Iran as part of the wasn’t-necessary U.S./Israeli war on that country — but that bombing was allegedly accidental/allegedly based on out-of-date mapping, though who knows? 😦
Certainly some ultra-memorable deaths in Shakespeare’s works, including “Macbeth” of course. I appreciate the other mentions, too!
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Most good books have a violent death, murder or otherwise.
A double murder that didn’t happen, if the intended deaths did, in The Human Stain by Philip Roth.
In Flannery O’Connor’s brilliant and haunting novel Wise Blood the principal character dies at the hand of a young policeman who preferred him unconscious as that would reduce the burden of bringing him in. He hits the man over the head with his billy club (new, for detail). “We don’t want to have no trouble with him”, he said [to his equally inexperienced partner]. You take his feet”. He died in the squad car, but they didn’t take notice, as the narrator casually observes.
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Thank you, Dingenom! True that many memorable novels have death in them, sometimes violent. It just occurred to me that one of the most violent “literary” novels I’ve ever read is Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian,” in which there’s all kinds of disgusting slaughter by white guys in the 19th-century American West.
I’ve read “Wise Blood,” and it IS excellent and haunting. Flannery O’Connor was of course better known for her short stories, but did well with her rare longer-form writing.
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This day commemorates what some thought was a justified murder. Motives for murder are endlessly interesting, both in real life and in fiction.
All this is to give my brain time to serve up some titles that haven’t been mentioned yet. Sadly, the only one that comes to mind is one of my own books, so I’ll bow out right here. 😃
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Thank you, Audrey! Yes, when leaders rule in a brutal matter (which Caesar did at least partly), their murders can feel justified by some.
You and others are always welcome to mention their own books, or books by fellow bloggers, in comments here. 🙂
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As a writer of mystery novels and a devoted mystery reader, I can list title after title of excellent books with murders in them. However, with the exception of Agatha Christie’s novel, I get the impression you are talking about “literature,” Dave. There are a number of outstanding mysteries that I think should count as literature, though. Here are three examples of genre books with murders that I think are classics:
Daphne du Maurier’s REBECCA
Dorothy L. Sayers’s STRONG POISON
Josephine Tey’s BRAT FARRAR
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Thank you, Kim! I avoided talking a lot about mysteries/detective fiction today because I’ve recently touched on that genre in several recent posts. I should have made that clear. 🙂 When one thinks of murders in novels, mysteries are a REALLY important part of the discussion, and, yes, that genre often is excellent literature.
I appreciate the three examples you offered! I’ve read at least something by all those authors, and they’re great at creating suspense, psychological nuance, and more. (Among what I’ve read are du Maurier’s “My Cousin Rachel,” Sayers’ “Gaudy Night,” and Tey’s “The Daughter of Time.”)
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I read your posts for the wonderful wealth of knowledge and to reacquaint myself with literature I once studied decades ago. So I had to Google famous murders in fiction for a list of works you didn’t have room to cover, and Roald Dahl’s “Lamb to the Slaughter” sounds like an interesting listen while I am working, if I can find an audio file. But I have been wanting to listen to Crime and Punishment for a while. So I might listen to that one first.
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Thank you for the kind words and comment, R. Jay! Googling can definitely help; I did that a few times while writing the post. 🙂 I remember seeing “Lamb to the Slaughter” adapted for a 1950s “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” TV episode (I watched a rerun of it at some point). “Crime and Punishment” would be very interesting to listen to!
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Native Son by Richard Wright comes to mind. (That book made a big impression on me.) The Lovely Bones is another book featuring a murder, although I found the book flawed. The central conceit started unravelling about half way through.
I just finished writing a short story based on a former student of mine who brutally murdered a store clerk.
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Thank you, Liz! Great mentions! That’s quite a fraught/painful/memorable murder in “Native Son” — and very relevant to race dynamics in the U.S. then and now. As for “The Lovely Bones,” I read it at least 20 years ago and can’t remember what I thought of how the central conceit was handled.
We might eventually see your just-finished short story on your blog? That had to be a personally intense story to write.
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It’s going to need more than a lifetime…but I’m glad there’s a treasure chest that will never get depleted. Thank you for these posts.
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So true, Smitha. And I love your line “…a treasure chest that will never get depleted”!
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I love reading your posts. It makes me realise how many books there are that I need to read.😊
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Thank you, Smitha! Much appreciated! We all have many books to get to. 🙂
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