Tom Ripley
and I got reacquainted on a sun lounger in Italy this summer. Patricia
Highsmith’s book written and set in the 1950s describes a time when an affluent
American could decamp to beautiful villas in Italy for the price of a waffle
and soda back in the U.S. and swan around collecting antiques and bohemian
artist friends. And, *major spoiler alert*, Tom Ripley can pass himself off as
the American he murders on the basis of a slight resemblance to a grainy
passport photo.
I got to
thinking over a Campari and a bowl of olives about how this could be made to
work in the present day. Answer – it couldn’t. A five second look at Facebook
and Instagram would have shown the Italian police exactly what Dickie Greenleaf
looked like. His bank card would reveal what he’d spent and where. And mobile
telephones would ruin the way Tom evades Greenleaf’s friends and family.
I should add
that one of my sons kindly provided some impromptu research on how Ripley could exist in
modern Italy by managing to break his phone, not remember our mobile numbers,
have his wallet and bank card pickpocketed in Rome and still blag his way to the
North of Italy with seven Euros and a half-remembered B&B name for our
rendezvous. But somehow it didn’t seem very realistic. Too far-fetched to put
in a book.
I’m currently
editing my next novel – a contemporary psychological YA thriller – and, like my
last one, I have to grapple with the omnipresence of tech and social media in the
world in which my young characters live.
Thriller
writers are already battling the annoying realities of forensics and police
investigations. As a YA writer, I want my 17-year-old main character to have
agency so must also side-line any pesky adults in positions of authority. The
list of things to tackle and exclude is long and growing.
Short of
setting everything back in the day of a temperamental telephone with a cord
that could be cut, or in the middle of the ocean, I’m forced to tread a fine
line between reality and plot to make the latter believable and current. All
this needs to be achieved in a subtle and original way as we’ve all read books
where we can too easily spot the moment that the author gets rid of the mobile
phone to keep the plot going.
As I gazed
out of many train windows in Northern Italy visiting places like Trento and
Bolzano half-hoping for a glimpse of Tom Ripley, I pondered another classic: Murder
on the Orient Express. Poirot would be able to use the train Wi-Fi to check
up on his carriage full of suspects and spot the link between them all. Since
batteries have a longer life or a portable power bank to keep them running even
longer, a mobile phone out of charge now seems hopelessly unrealistic, especially
as even the train has charging points.
It’s not
just the curse of the smart phone, all those plots involving actual letters would
have to go as no one writes letters anymore. Like Tess of the D’Urbervilles
where Tess’s letter to Angel gets caught under the doormat with disastrous
consequences.
Or the use
of traffic cameras in The Great Gatsby would have shown exactly who was
driving the car that killed Myrtle.
Books where
characters get lost would be ruined by Google Maps, and ditto for plots where people go missing
and could be easily found by a track my phone App.
Any dodgy
hotels would be ruled out by a quick flick through TripAdvisor. Marion would
never stay at the Bates Motel in Psycho. No one would
move to 112 Ocean Avenue after a brief look at Zoopla’s neighbourhood guide and
thus avoid The Amityville Horror.
But,
surrounded by kids on trains watching cartoons or adults taking endless selfies
of themselves, I was struck more than previous years about the need for all of
us to unplug from our phones for a while. And when I read a book – the ultimate
unplugging experience – I want to get away from all that. I don’t want Google
or Facebook or Apps intruding on the story. I need a plot given time to evolve and breathe.
I still hope for random meetings of
strangers, letters written in ink, puzzles to work out for myself – and teenage
kids to find their parents come what may.
And I want
characters like Tom Ripley to be reading newspapers and sipping cocktails in the sunshine,
unplugged.
Tracy
Darnton is the author of The Truth About Lies, shortlisted for the
Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2019. She has an MA in Writing for Young
People.
You can
follow Tracy on Twitter @TracyDarnton and on Instagram tracydarnton
5 comments:
Loved this. Tracy. Glad you can still laze and dream.
There are still areas of the world where wi-fi reception is poor or limited, eg Death Valley in California. Note the name. Just saying.
Enjoyed the post - and yes, technology ruins all those classic plots, but it provides new ones. I recently wrote a thriller involving scams and murder and my villainess found technology helpful at almost every turn. Mr Ripley today would simply swop to seducing the rich and guillable via internet dating sites.
Well said, Tracy! Would it surprise you to know people were considering this sort of thing years ago? In a novel by Mack Reynolds, written in the 1970s but set in the future, the hero is having trouble keeping his tracks hidden because everyone uses credit cards instead of cash - cash is gone. That sounds pretty up to date, doesn’t it?
On the other hand, a more recent YA novel I read had the main character looking up in a dusty library some information easily available, at the time, on a quick Google search.
Poirot had a tendency to send telegrams, the equivalent of today’s emails and online searches, but it’s possible that snowed-in as the train was, in the middle of nowhere, it might not have internet access, or why ask Poirot anyway, when you could just call in the police?
Great post! I find when reading contemporary crime that authors often use technology to make things too easy. The crime-solver has a handy all-powerful geek (usually a stereotyped bloke who eats loads of junk food and lives in a sort of cave-room full of equipment). They can provide anything needed super-quickly, thus smoothing the way. Modern Ripley could have those semi-magical tec whizz powers to cover his tracks.
Thanks for the comments everyone. Yes, Patricia Highsmith was no doubt cursing having to deal with the telephone and very modern travellers cheques and the fact that the stamps in the passport would give away whether he'd left the ports or not. Though I think I prefer that to having to outwit an eGate...
And Moira - I need an all-powerful geek in my own life please.
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