Lyn Hamilton: Mystery Readers Journal

This article by Lyn Hamilton is reprinted from the Mystery Readers Journal, Cool Canadian Crime issue: Volume 19:4 (Winter 2003-2004)

You Can Take The Girl Out of the Country, But…
by Lyn Hamilton (Toronto, Ontario)

There is nothing like life lived vicariously through a character of your own invention, in my case the intrepid Toronto antique dealer Lara McClintoch. For one thing, it’s cheaper that way. Lara scours the world in search of the rare and the beautiful for her shop, the impeccably stylish McClintoch & Swain. The store is located in Toronto’s upscale Yorkville neighborhood, and Lara labors long and hard to ensure the shop lives up to its location. From the souks of North Africa to the flea markets of Paris and the stately homes of Tuscany and Ireland, she can usually be found hot on the trail of the perfect antiquity.

Lara owns the store I always wanted to have. Years ago, after many weekends of antique-hunting—Canadian pine furniture and pressed glass—and holiday trips—old shadow puppets, antique prints and maps, carvings and textiles—I decided to look into the possibility of opening a shop. For one thing, I was running out of space, and it seemed to me if I could sell some of what I’d amassed, I could keep buying more. I spent many months on the research: what to buy and where, how to find and then import treasures from afar. I looked at space, not quite as stylish as Lara’s perhaps, but close to where she now resides. At some point in this thoroughly enjoyable exercise, I realized how much money this would require. The research went into a file marked Someday. That day came when I first imagined writing a mystery, what was to become The Xibalba Murders. Lara sprang full grown into my brain, complete with store.

It is also a lot safer. In addition to her impressive shopping skills, Lara displays an uncanny knack for finding bodies— upwards of twenty of them so far—and for tracking their killers down. In this particular undertaking she has been pursued by a vicious killer, attacked by tomb robbers, and stalked by terrorists, but she has managed to bring criminals to justice in Mexico, Malta, Peru, Ireland, Tunisia, Tuscany, Thailand, and most recently, Eastern Europe.
I, on the other hand, get to indulge a passion for archaeology and travel while researching these novels, most especially pilgrimages to UNESCO World Heritage sites. There are well over 600 of these wonderful places, and I’ve only visited 115 of them. So far the body count for these excursions of mine is exactly zero, and while I’ve occasionally visited archaeological dig sites in remote locations, the trips, from the danger standpoint, have been uneventful. The most dramatic turn of events to date was being asked to come back to a 5000 year old temple in Malta after it closed to have sex on the altar stone. I declined. Lara would have refused this wonderful offer too, but she would have had a better exit line.

Considering how little Lara is actually at home—the fact that she is in business with her ex-husband, the incredibly shallow Clive Swain, may have something to do with those extended trips—what makes her think she can push our way into a feature issue on Cool Canadian Crime? For that matter, why do I, given that I have chosen to set each of the novels in the series in an exotic location outside North America, and to explore the archaeology and mythology of far off lands?

The answer, to borrow a phrase, is that you can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl. I would argue that Lara brings a Canadian sensibility to everything she does and everywhere she goes, to wit—
You know Lara is Canadian because:
1. She is polite. She makes a point of knowing the words for please and thank you in the language of all the countries she visits.
2. She is nice to just about everyone, even, on occasion, the murderer. (She is also incredibly stubborn, but that probably has nothing to do with being Canadian.)
3. Not only does she not own a gun, she has no idea how to use one.
4. Coming from a country that defines itself not so much by what it is, but rather by what it is not—not British, not American—she is fascinated by cultures that are proud of who they are, and spends a great deal of time studying them. Her investigations into the past of various countries and people have been known to get her into a lot of trouble.
5. A citizen of a nation known for its modesty, even a collective inferiority complex, she feels a real affinity for the underdog. Never imagining that anyone would like to resemble her in any way, she tries to change no one on her visits, and to leave every country the way she found it, minus a murderer or two.
6. As a resident of a city that has often been called the most multicultural city in the world, she’ll eat anything. Never one to let her sleuthing duties spoil her appetite, she has munched, among other things, street food in Bangkok, pub grub in Ireland, and, in her next adventure, The Magyar Venus, supremely fattening pastries with names she can’t pronounce in Budapest coffeehouses. She also knows the word for beer in at least a dozen languages. (I have to try all these things too. The sacrifices I make for my art.)
Taken all together these characteristics are a compelling, but not absolutely conclusive argument for her inclusion as a Canadian sleuth. But one last fact clinches it.
7. You know Lara and I are Canadians because every year, when the very first snowflake falls from the sky, we pack up and leave town.