The Madness of Murder

​Paul tossed aside the rusted hot plate. Useless. “Sir, it’s madness to think anyone who knew Evie would kill her.”
 
“Yet madness dwells within all of us.” The Inspector spoke frankly with the novice officer. “For everyone there is a moment when fear or false conviction reverberates within the mind, when our self-talk drowns out sensibility, or when the pain of betrayal erodes our morals. Rage mutes sanity and floods that instant with lunacy. Understand this, Paul: Within that reckless moment, every one of us is capable of murder. Don’t think friendship can protect someone. The killer may well regret an act of violence, but he cannot give back what he has taken. He can only hope to hide his insanity from others. From himself. So, we search everywhere and examine everyone.”

Excerpt from The Tide Turns

This is the madness of murder. When I first wrote this passage, I was channeling Agatha Christie’s marvelous Belgium detective, Hercule Poirot, as portrayed by David Suchet for twenty-five years on PBS television’s Masterpiece Mystery series. 

Christie's home at Greenway House in Devon, England.

I found tremendous pleasure during my travels to the U.K. but none as magnificent as when I visited the Greenway Estate and stood where David Suchet posed before the cameras for the series' episode entitled, "Dead Man's Folly." You’ll find bits of Poirot surfacing in DCI Tremaine’s kindness, humility, and integrity—all essential qualities which offset the darkness that both detectives face in their work. 

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​The victim may be one of the good God’s saints or - on the contrary - a monster of infamy. It moves me not. The fact is the same. A life—taken! I say it always—I do not approve of murder.

Hercule Poirot, Appointment with Death by Agatha Christie