Willeford ends his novel as ridiculously as he began it. Hoke has caught on to Freddy’s crimes and is able to track down his residence. After Freddy has shot two people (without Hoke knowing), Hoke enters Freddy’s residence without warning, and points his gun at Freddy. After telling Freddy to raise his hands, the murderer asks, “What’ll you do if I don’t, old man, shoot me? And what are you doing in my house? Where’s your warrant?” (174). When Freddy brings up the very recent shootings, Willeford writes in that Hoke is “genuinely puzzled” and has to ask what happened in the dealer’s shop. Eventually Hoke begins to shoot at the dangerous and uncooperative Freddy, which in itself is not suspicious for a police officer to do. But something about the scene is suspicious. Willeford writes, “As the .38 cleared [Freddy’s] pocket, Hoke shot him in the stomach. Freddy screamed and rolled over, trying to get to his feet and get the pistol out of his pocket at the same time. Hoke shot him in the spine, and Freddy stopped moving. Hoke bent down and fired another into the back of Freddy’s head” (175). Police officers can indeed fire their guns in self-defense, but excessive force is not permitted. Willeford distinctly writes that Freddy stopped moving, yet Hoke, a supposedly upstanding cop, proceeds to shoot him in the back of the head like an executioner would do. And somehow Hoke’s fellow officers are able to play off Freddy’s overkill as necessary. But Hoke admits to himself the reason he fired that last round: “No matter how he rationalized his actions, Hoke suspected that the real reason he had killed Freddy Frenger was that the man had invaded his room at the Eldorado Hotel and beat the shit out of him. And if he could do it once, he could do it a second time” (183). This bit of rationalization makes sense on Hoke-the-scared-citizen’s part, but the respected Detective Mosely should have known better for the possible jeopardization of his department and of his career. Luckily for him, he is well taken care of as an officer of the law, which in itself is more unlawful than unbelievable.
Other aspects of Miami Blues are fairly close to reality, too. For instance, racial tensions are represented throughout the novel, closely following the Miami of the time’s real native vs. immigrant issues. Hoke’s partner, Bill Henderson, is a prime example of the stereotypical, yet at times more real than not, cop with a prejudice towards minorities. At one of Henderson’s crime scenes, we learn that after discovering the bodies of her husband, brother, a young boy, and the maid, a Latina woman “had become hysterical” (70). As a result of her hysteria, she was sent to the hospital. Henderson proposes to Hoke that she had helped the killers get away, saying, “ Life is cheap for those fuckers in Colombia. They might’ve brought the kid along with that plan in mind all along” (72). Racially degrading statements like this one are repeated and echoed throughout the novel, giving its readers a reflection of many of the actual opinions people held in 1980’s Miami. Miami Blues uses these real-life racial tensions and Hoke’s human fear in killing Freddy to give its readers a glimpse of true human nature. And while that glimpse is nice to see, it is merely a breath of fresh air amidst the hilarious onslaught of ridiculousness.
The Silence of the Lambs is a prime example of the detective novel falling into the middle of the believability scale. There are many components of the novel which do reflect real life, but one aspect of the novel is simply so unrealistic that it knocks the entire book down from full believability: Starling as a student at the FBI Academy and as the agent assigned to a national top priority issue. Throughout the entire novel, Starling is rushing from location to location, studying for tests whenever she can find the time. In the Academy and in the FBI itself, everyone knows and reminds the reader repeatedly that Starling risks being “recycled” if she misses her finals, or fails due to lack of study time. Being recycled is not the fastest way to advance an agent’s career as they are booted from the Academy until another spot eventually opens up. Starling is risking all she has worked for because of the Buffalo Bill case, but she continues working on it all the same. Starling’s persistence on the Buffalo Bill case is not completely surprising, however, as she is passionate about helping the victims and about gaining real experience. More surprising is her being appointed to the case in the first place. Just as a student would want their teacher to have the proper and entire education required, any citizen following the case would also want a person properly qualified to track the killer down to be assigned to the case. Buffalo Bill’s case begins making serious national headlines when a senator’s daughter is abducted, and yet the reader is supposed to accept that top FBI officials have appointed a student of the Agency to get information from a notoriously uninformative man. Starling gets some information and is able to track down Buffalo Bill, but regardless the circumstances leading to her success are unrealistic.
On the other hand, The Silence of the Lambs presents very realistic scenarios in the characters themselves. For instance, Harris provides his readers with a very polite, very unassuming serial killer. While many people believe most, if not all, serial killers to be blatantly obvious killers (mean, scary looking, what have you), Ted Bundy, real life serial killer, is a great example of this novel’s reflection of true human events. Ted Bundy is “a striking contrast to the general image of a “homicidal maniac”: attractive, self-assured, politically ambitious […] With his chameleon-like ability to blend, his talent for belonging, Bundy posed an ever-present danger” (Newton, 30). While not necessarily politically ambitious, Hannibal Lector is indeed ambitious, as he received his doctorate in psychiatry. And, like Bundy, we see at the end of the novel that Lector has the ability to blend in, too, even when his face is covered in bandages. He goes to St. Louis, knowing that it “was one place in the world where he could walk around with a bandage on his face without exciting interest” due to the amount of plastic surgeries which take place there (251). This exposition of serial killers at their scariest, seemingly one of us, is the greatest reflection of reality The Silence of the Lambs provides its readers. We also see very believable conversations between Starling and Lector, and with their common background in psychology the conversations become very interesting. The way they, especially Lector, muse over psychological behaviorisms together is both mind-boggling and believable; so when Starling finally figures out Lector’s riddles, the reader can understand as well. For example, at one point Starling thinks back to Kimberly, the girl in the morgue who had triangular patches of skin removed from her back. Starling realizes that “THEY’RE DARTS—HE TOOK THOSE TRIANGLES TO MAKE DARTS SO HE COULD LET OUT HER WAIST. […] BUFFALO BILL’S TRAINED TO SERIOUSLY SEW—HE’S NOT JUST PICKING OUT READY-TO-WEAR. What did Dr. Lector say? “He’s making himself a girl suit out of real girls.” What did he say to me? “Do you sew, Clarice?” Damn straight I do” (294). By combining Starling’s own background with reminding the audience of what Lector had said to her, Harris is leading the reader to discovery along with Starling. This natural understanding of Starling’s thoughts and the example through Lector of what a killer can really be stabilize The Silence of the Lambs as a fairly believable novel.
All in all, these detective novels portray at least some true aspects of life, but none so much as Winter’s Bone. The foundation of the novel rests upon the lifestyle of the characters. They, especially Ree and her family, are poor and have a basic education. They are surrounded by hard drugs, and submerged in an extremely patriarchal society. A prime example of the conditions women are subjected to in this world lies in the first introduction to Gail. When Ree goes to visit her best friend, Gail answers the door and says, “Thank god it’s you, Sweet Pea, and not Floyd’s goddamn mommy’n daddy again.” Her husband pipes up and says, “Would you hush your mouth about them? Just stick a pickle in it. They put a roof over your head, ain’t they?” He later tells Ree, “Don’t hang around too long. She’s got that kid now” (32-33). The bickering about Floyd’s parents is fairly typical behavior amongst young newlyweds, and sometimes even amongst couples who have been together a while. The most revealing part of the scene with Gail is how she is now stuck with Floyd because of her baby. She is subjected to his and his parents’ say, with the narrator even noting that “Gail had […] a new look of baffled hurt, a left-behind sadness, like she saw that the great world kept spinning onward and away while she’d overnight become glued to her spot” (32). Young mothers oftentimes can feel that they have no options for themselves, that their life must revolve around the baby and husband/boyfriend from now on. Gail’s sad example is exemplary of what many young mothers go through daily.
Another sad example of real life circumstances lies in Ree’s beating. Just as believing in Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the Lambs could initially be off-putting, the reader may have a hard time believing women could cause severe damage like the women in Winter’s Bone do to Ree. As Ree awakens, her injuries are described in very graphic terms:
The sightless eye was flattened shut and stretched tight. She felt the swelling and tried to pry the eyelid open, but could not even sense daylight through that eye. Blood had to be spit and came out in heavy wads trailed by stringy drools that lapped onto her chin and cheeks. With her tongue she could feel shreds of her own meat broken from inside her lips. Her skirt was thrown up and her legs were decked with bruises that colored uglier as she watched. […] She pulled herself upright and everything she saw moved in slow circles. Moans droned from her chest of bones. Shit leaked from her panties and she felt runnels of yuck on her thighs (132-33, 137).
Many people would read this and wonder how anyone, let alone three women, could do this extent of damage to a harmless young girl. A plethora of cases exist in which young girls are the victims, and an abundance in which one person committing heinous acts against numerous women, from Ted Bundy to Gary Heidnik. Even more interesting than having the victim be female is having the assailant be female. This scenario, too, has real life examples, one famous example lying in Aileen Wuornos. During a special hearing for Wuornos deliberating her fate for the slaying of several men, she herself told the judge, “I will kill again. I’ve got hate crawling through my system. There is no point in sparing me. I’m a waste of the taxpayers’ money” (Newton, 291). Knowing that there really are women who feel this way, who feel so naturally violent towards others, makes believing the stories in Winter’s Bone that much more believable and eye-opening.
While all detective novels fall somewhere along the scale of believability, the believable aspect of the novels is not the most important one. In fact, a novel can still be very entertaining and informative of real-life circumstances while not being believable on the whole, like we see in Miami Blues. No matter how entertaining the novel, though, the nods toward true human nature that are presented to readers are a big part of what makes the detective novel a worthwhile read. “Abnormal” human nature and behavior is an addicting subject to readers today; reading about real aspects of human life, things that really do happen not only in the pages we hold but also in the world we behold, allows the reader to relate to the characters in some sense. This relation to and learning about the characters could, in turn, cause readers to learn something about themselves.
Works Cited
Harris, Thomas. The Silence of the Lambs. St. Martin’s Griffin, New York: 1988. Print.
Newton, Michael. The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers: A Study of the Chilling Criminal Phenomenon, from the “Angels of Death” to the “Zodiac” Killer. 2nd. ed. Checkmark Books, New York: 2006. Print.
Willeford, Charles. Miami Blues. Random House, Inc. New York: 2004. Print.
Woodrell, Daniel. Winter’s Bone. Hachette Book Group, New York: 2007. Print.