Pandora's Box by Erin Kinsley

 Imagine you’ve found the perfect gift for someone you love. 

As you wrap it in well-chosen paper, tie round a ribbon and write your message on the card, you’re full of anticipation of their pleasure when it’s opened. And as you hoped, they’re delighted with your choice, thanking you with warm smiles and a hug. 

Except that weeks later, your gift derails their whole life.

An unintended gift of a poisoned chalice is at the heart of my third emotional thriller, Missing, when a young woman on uneasy terms with her sister buys her a present potentially spring-loaded with more misfortunes than Pandora’s box. 

Like most crime writers, I’m intrigued by every kind of mystery, from the true identity of Jack the Ripper to the unsolved disappearance of Claudia Lawrence. And that love of mysteries makes me unapologetically a fan of Long Lost Family, a TV programme popular on both sides of the Atlantic, whose speciality is re-uniting mothers with children they were forced to give up for adoption decades ago, and siblings separated at birth. Participants often contact the programme after years of fruitless searching, and are frequently overwhelmed to find themselves in emotional meetings before the closing credits roll. 

But how does Long Lost Family so often succeed in tracking people down where its hugely invested and committed participants have previously failed? Simply because it solves these ‘cold cases’ using a very contemporary tool: a home-test DNA kit.

DNA testing has come a long way in the thirty years since it was first used in the UK to secure a conviction in a court of law. The case was the killing of Dawn Ashworth by Colin Pitchfork, a baker from Leicestershire. Ultimately, Pitchfork was convicted of two murders, described by the judge at his trial as ‘particularly sadistic’, and his release from prison this summer (2021) is the cause of some controversy. Sentenced today rather than under 1980s law, his crimes would have attracted a whole-life tariff.

From that point forward, DNA testing began to take a central role in crime detection, and also became more commonplace in the area of family law, to establish paternity. Before long, genealogy sites like Ancestry.com took the short step to packaging DIY kits aimed at the burgeoning numbers of people researching their personal history and family trees. 

Sounds like a cool and unique gift, wouldn’t you say? A simple test and an eight-week wait could save you years of trawling through census records online, or scouring the ledgers of ancient parish records in cold and draughty churches to trace your elusive ancestors. 

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, for some people – including the sisters in Missing – a DNA test reveals shocking information, opening cans of worms that can’t be resealed and undermining carefully curated family secrets. 

Of course, those digging for their roots have always run the risk of uncovering potentially uncomfortable truths - the date of a marriage only days before a birth (or no record of any marriage at all), a death from syphilis or addiction, maybe a dishonourable mention in a newspaper report of court proceedings – but whatever was hidden was usually far back in the past.

But an unexpected DNA test result impinges on people still very much alive, and for some they throw up deeply troubling insights, proving that at a molecular level, they’re not the person they thought they were. 

What happens when it turns out your uncle is your father, your mother isn’t your mother or your brother shares no blood with you at all? Those on the receiving end of unexpected results are bewildered and confused. Often, they want answers to new questions they may never get, especially if those with knowledge are already dead. Then, whether they like it or not, they’ve inherited the family secret, and must make the decision whether to share it, or keep it to themselves as it’s been kept from them. 

The knowledge those kits offer is intriguing and enticing, but just like Pandora’s box, it might be better not to lift the lid. 

There is such a thing as too much information, and sometimes, ignorance is bliss. 

Missing by Erin Kinsley (Headline) Out Now

A mother walks into the sea... and never comes back. Why? One perfect summer day, mother of two Alice walks into the sea . . . and never comes back. Her daughters - loyal but fragile Lily, and headstrong, long-absent Marietta - are forcibly reunited by her disappearance. Meanwhile, with retirement looming, DI Fox investigates cold cases long since forgotten. And there's one obsession he won't let go: a tragic death twenty years before. Can Lily and Marietta uncover what happened to their mother? Will Fox solve a mystery that has haunted him for decades? As their stories unexpectedly collide, long-buried secrets will change their lives in unimaginable ways.

The Problem with DNA – 5 historical crime reads

Author Rebecca Alexander writes historical crime fiction as well as fantasy novels.  A Shroud of Leaves is the second book to feature Archaeologist Sage Westfield.  Here she suggests some brilliant historical crime novels.

 Writing crime novels has recently become harder. In the twenty-first century CCTV cameras watch every high street and business. DNA, blood spatter, fibre and hair analysis have become great forensic tools to solve murders.  Before the 1990s these technologies were in their infancy. Few people carried a mobile phone, even less a camera everywhere they went. Crime investigations were based on interviews, careful observation of the scene of crime and the accumulation of evidence. Setting a crime mystery in the pre-DNA days makes the investigation more difficult to solve, but relies on talking to real suspects. When I started writing about an archaeologist who solves a crime in 1580 in A Baby’s Bones, I had even less sources to rely on as all the suspects were long dead. In the sequel, A Shroud of Leaves, Sage Westfield has a direct comparison between modern forensic methods in investigating a contemporary crime, and the limited evidence available in 1992 and 1913.

 I’m not alone in setting crime novels in the pre-technological past. I can suggest a few brilliant reads for more crime novels set in history:

 SJ Parris’s Giordano Bruno series of books (Conspiracy from 2017 is the latest) are set around the 1580s. The books are full of treasonable or heretical plots and horrible murders, and a host of spies and double agents form Bruno’s circle. Bruno, an ex-priest and on the run from the Inquisition, uses his knowledge of people to solve the crimes. Everyone has secrets, everyone is a suspect. 

Antonia Hodgson’s The Devil in the Marshalsea gives us an unusual investigator. In 1727 Tom Hawkins is imprisoned for a debt of ten pounds. Tom fights to be released if he can solve a murder committed inside the chaotic, squalid prison. Well researched, the book shows a society devastated by financial collapse, gambling, exploitation and amorality. Tom, the central character, is our eyes and ears and the prison is as strange and terrifying a place for him as it seems to us. Almost every character is a rogue, including Tom, yet many are likeable, making a living as best they can. This is not a cosy, period drama, this is fast and dramatic with great characters as he solves the crime.

Kate Summerscale’s, The Suspicions of Mr Whicheror The Murder at Road HillHouse is a Victorian murder based on a true story. Summerscale evokes the difficulties of weaving together testimony from family members and servants. No-one dare tell the whole truth, the reader is left as frustrated as Detective Whicher by the divisions of class and education. She never lets us forget the three year old victim, his throat cut, in the servants’ privy.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood is also based on a true crime, this time from Canada in 1843.  The story of sixteen year old Irish maid Grace Marks, who was convicted of killing her employer (and by implication, his mistress), Alias Grace explores her internal world through the efforts of an early American psychiatrist. Dr Simon Jordan is beguiled by Grace as he is repelled by her crime and the violence of her abusive captivity. The reader is left to weigh the evidence as it’s exposed, much like at the trial, in a mess of half-truths, lies and inexpert evidence.

Graeme Macrae Burnet’s His Bloody Project is a ‘found history’, with witness statements from all parts of the examination (each with their prejudices and lies) including those of the prime suspect’s father, the prison doctor and his own journal. The seventeen-year-old Roderick Macrae is from the remotest part of the west coast of Scotland and is accused of three violent deaths. He is also suspected of ‘moral imbecility’ or madness, and the novel is written so convincingly as a family history it seems real. It asks questions about the effects of brutality and emotional neglect throughout, as well as exploring the murders themselves. Like Alias Grace, it asks questions about the effects of brutality and emotional neglect, as well as exploring Roddy’s relationship with the victims.

From police surgeons photographing the eyes of Jack the Ripper’s victims in 1888 to modern DNA phenotype profiles that can ‘read’ DNA to produce a portrait, scientists have been pushing technology forward to solve crime using evidence rather than flawed witness statements. As a writer, I love those unreliable witnesses and misleading statements. Sage Westfield will keep investigating historical crimes through archaeology because like a lot of us, she is deeply curious about human motivations – even if they end in murder.

A Shroud of Leaves by Rebecca Alexander (£8.99, Titan Books) Out Now

"The victim had been buried in a carved hollow in the grass and shrouded in fallen leaves..." Archaeologist Sage Westfield has her first forensics case: investigating the murder of a teenage girl. Hidden by holly leaves, the girl's body has been discovered on the grounds of a stately home, where another teenage girl went missing twenty years ago - but her body was never found. The police suspect the reclusive owner, Alistair Chorleigh, who was questioned but never charged. But when Sage investigates a nearby burial mound - and uncovers rumours of an ancient curse - she discovers the story of another mysterious disappearance over a hundred years ago. Sage will need both her modern forensics skills and her archaeological knowledge to unearth the devastating truth.

Real Justice being served in the Garden of Burning Sand

Today's guest blog is by Corban Addison. Born in 1979, Corban Addison holds degrees in law and engineering from the University of Virginia and California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.  He began to experiment with writing at the age of fifteen; about the same time he developed an interest in international travel.  After completing a federal clerkship he began his career specialising in corporate law and litigation.  He has an abiding interest in international human rights, and is a supporter of numerous causes, including the abolition of modern slavery.

Imagine trying to prosecute a child rape case without the benefit of DNA. Now imagine that the child has Down syndrome and her speech capacity is limited; that her abuser is from an influential family with connections to the judge; that the police have no transport to track down leads and witnesses; and that the victim's testimony--and that of her playmates--is legally insufficient to uphold a conviction for the simple reason that they are minors. You are a human rights attorney advocating for the child. What do you do? What can you do that will make a difference?

Welcome to the world of Zoe Fleming and The Garden of Burning Sand--my new novel set in Southern Africa and the United States.

As a lawyer with a daughter of my own, I wish I could say that Garden is a work of pure fiction, a chimera I conjured up in my febrile legal imagination after one too many glasses of wine. Sadly, it is not. It was inspired by real-life events--by the harrowing tale of a Zambian girl with special needs whose family took her rapist to court despite threats of reprisal, and by the courageous non-profit lawyers who risked their lives and their reputations to see justice done.

In recent years, the media has devoted much attention to the global scourge of violence against women. Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times columnist and co-author of Half the Sky, calls the oppression of women worldwide "the great moral challenge of the 21st century”.  Few people, however, are aware how often children are targeted for rape in Southern Africa, thanks to prevailing misogynistic attitudes and myths propagated by witch doctors about a cure-all for HIV.

In researching Garden, I spent six weeks in Zambia and South Africa, interviewing lawyers, doctors, social workers, and members of the development community about the problem and its solutions. I was aghast to learn that DNA is absent from Zambia's prosecutorial arsenal because there is no laboratory in the country. The closest facility is a thousand miles away in Johannesburg, and neither the courts nor the victims of rape have the money to send the evidence abroad for analysis.

The deeper I dug, the more dysfunction I discovered. I spoke to the chief paediatric

physician at Lusaka's University Teaching Hospital--an eminent doctor and passionate advocate for children--who told me that all of the semen samples he collects from minor victims he has to destroy because he has no lab to process them. I spent time with human rights attorneys who shared stories from "defilement" cases they had worked--about evidence gone missing, magistrates who reversed their own decisions under threat from defendants, and witnesses who were pressured not to testify or disappeared before trial.  I also learned that in Zambia the testimony of a minor must be corroborated by adult testimony or physical evidence, making it next to impossible to secure a conviction where the only eyewitnesses are children.

With so many hurdles to effective prosecution, it is no surprise that most defendants in child rape cases are exonerated. Time and again, defendants stand in the dock and rehearse a common refrain: "It's terrible that this child was raped, Your Worship, but I have no idea who did it.”  And one after another the judges let them go. In the vast majority of instances, this is where the story ends--unspeakable humiliation for the victim and blissful impunity for her abuser.

But exceptions do exist. In a few rare cases, real justice is served. These are the stories I went to Africa to find. This is the story I tell in The Garden of Burning Sand.

More information about Corban Addison can be found on his website and you can also find him on Facebook and on Twitter @CorbanAddison.

THE GARDEN OF BURNING SAND by Corban Addison is published by Quercus, hardback £16.99.