Happy ValenCrimes: Dangerous Liasons & Fatal Attractions

Love can drive you crazy, right? What better way to celebrate the most romantic day of the year than to indulge in stories of love gone very, VERY wrong?

​This month on the Association Blog, our team has put together a list of our top ValenCrimes reads that range from power couples of crime fiction to fatal attractions and dangerous liaisons. 

Ffion Davies

Dangerous liaisons are often a key plot device in crime fiction, particularly when encountering the deadly femme fatale, as epitomised by the notorious antagonist of Vera Caspary's Bedeilia (1945). Bedelia is the 'perfect' wife; she is a living fantasy of ultimate domesticity and desirability, and her new husband, Charlie Hort, can't quite believe his luck. As usual in domestic noir, this martial bliss proves short-lived; the newlyweds are rocked when Charlie falls ill with no apparent cause, and shadowy figures from Bedelia's past begin cropping up at an alarming rate. As suspicions fall on Bedelia, Charlie is forced to face the horrifying truth: could his beloved wife really be a serial murderess with a trail of dead husbands and insurance claims scattered across the country? Will he be the next victim in her quest for financial autonomy? 

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Linda Ledford-Miller

​They say love is blind, but perhaps it’s just slow. That certainly seems to be the case in the Charles Finch series of Charles Lenox novels. Charles Lenox is the second son of a wealthy family, and thus not the heir to the family estate, nor is he entitled to the family seat in Parliament. He is, however, wealthy and of a social class that sees paid employment as beneath them. Despite society’s proscriptions, he becomes a private detective—unpaid to be sure. His next-door neighbor and lifelong friend, the lovely Lady Jane Grey, serves as his listening post, his entrée to the high society that might otherwise shun him, and even solicits his services when her maid apparently dies by suicide. Meanwhile, Charles suffers from an unrequited and unexpressed love for Lady Jane. He must watch her marry a fine military man and quickly become a widow. He intends to propose, but each time lets the opportune moment pass by. Only by the end of the second novel in the series, The September Society, does he finally propose, and only then because, as a friend, she shares with him a marriage proposal that she has turned down. “With a strange mixture of courage and happiness roiling in his heart” he finally proposes. And Lady Jane replies, “Oh, of course, Charles. Of course I will.” 

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Eric Sandberg 

Crime fiction is not necessarily the go-to genre for timeless loves stories: it has few pairings to add to the likes of Romeo and Juliet, Andrei Bolkonsky and Natasha Rostova, or Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy. The most notable exception to this rule is Dorothy L. Sayers’ immortal pairing of Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, whose gradually developing relationship is one of the glories of the Golden Age of detective fiction. But are they dangerous? Well, not in the sense that Mickey and Mallory Knox from Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers are dangerous, but in other ways – more important ways – yes. For beyond the riveting scenes of detection and rapier wit for which Sayers’ work is remembered, the story she tells of Lord Peter and Harriet’s love is about nothing so much as the danger that demands to be faced in the total commitment of one human being to another.

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Kirsten T. Saxton

Alice Thomas Ellis' terrific edited collection of women's short fiction, Valentine's Day: Women Against Men, Stories of Revenge, is filled with crackling stories about women who have had it and are not going to take it anymore. Not only that, these women are out for full-fledged vengeance against the men who have wronged them. As Anna Haycraft, Ellis was also the respected fiction editor of Gerald Duckworth & Co, and her editorial skill shines in the book's remarkably strong list of writers:  Alice Munro, Joyce Carol Oates, Fay Weldon, Carol Shields, Pat Knight, Agatha Christie, Shelley Weiner, Patrice Chaplin, Judith Amantbis, Sylvia Petter, Jane Barker Wright, Norma Meacock, Pauline Holdstock, Jean Pickering, Vicky Crut, Deborah Bosley, Amanda Graig, and Clare Colvin. Under her pen name, Ellis was a critically acclaimed novelist whose fiction straddles black comedy and tragedy; her keen eye and sensibility shape this wonderfully macabre collection, and her introduction provides a smart historical and theoretical context for the theme, despite her insistent claims not to be a feminist because, as she puts it "any woman who could cook could also poison."

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Lea Grießbach 

Who doesn’t enjoy good banter and a fiercely independent heroine? Vowing to never dally with an Englishman, Veronica Speedwell keeps her amorous adventures to her butterfly expeditions, never contacting a man twice. But when her last living relative dies, and Veronica narrowly escapes an abduction attempt with the help of a German baron, she has to reassess these vows. Following her rescuer to London, she gets wrapped up in a mysterious conspiracy, facing murder most foul. Soon after she arrives, her rescuer dies, and Veronica has to work with a coarse but handsome taxidermist who fears that Veronica has killed the baron herself. On the way, she tries to uncover the mystery of her parentage and the sudden intake in abduction attempts on her person. All while facing the repercussions of love, struggling not to give in to her utmost desire.

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Emily Farmer

Netflix’s latest addition to its true crime collection is The Tinder Swindler, a feature-length documentary detailing the brazen actions of a con man whose hunting ground, Tinder, provided him with a wealth of victims with which to extract millions of dollars from to fund his champagne lifestyle. Seeing the experience through the eyes of the women preyed upon encourages the viewer to realise the capability of a single person to exploit a person’s generosity to a life-altering degree.