Writing about Blind Detectives - Part 1

I had the pleasure of meeting Christina Koning (above) some years ago at a Christmas crime writing event at Heffers in Cambridge. Since then, I've been pleased to see her growing reputation as a crime novelist, author of a series of novels published by Allison & Busby which feature one of the genre's enduring tropes, the blind detective. She's kindly contributed a guest post on this subject, split into two because of length. Here is part one:

'When I started writing the first novel in the Blind Detective series in 2014, I had no idea it would be a detective story nor that there would be a series. I just wanted to write about my grandfather, a veteran of the First World war, blinded at Ypres, on the anniversary of the start of that conflict. It was only as the book progressed that it struck me that it would make a good murder mystery, and that the central character’s blindness, far from being a disadvantage as far as his sleuthing abilities were concerned, would give him some distinct advantages. I also liked the idea that, as readers, we are all ‘blind detectives’, navigating our way through the narrative with the aid of clues which might or might not prove misleading.
         
In order to give some authenticity to my portrayal, I first turned to autobiographical works such as Sir Ian Fraser’s My Story of St Dunstan’s. From this, and other accounts by blinded veterans of both the First and Second World Wars, I found that it would indeed be possible for my detective to be blind, and still function effectively in a sighted world. In some respects, my character’s disability makes him more effective, since he has been obliged because of it to train his memory and wits in ways a sighted person would never need to.
 
I extended my reading to other works of crime fiction which had blind characters as their protagonists. It turned out that there were quite a few of these — indeed it might be said that ‘blind detectives’ are a sub-genre of the form. Perhaps the best known of these is Max Carrados, in the series published from 1914 by Ernest Bramah. Carrados is a gentleman-sleuth in the Lord Peter Wimsey mode, and the stories are very engaging. However, their treatment of the central character’s disability is far from realistic. In addition to a kind of sixth sense which enables him to describe a stranger’s appearance in minute detail the minute he walks into the room, Carrados can ‘read’ newspaper headlines, using only his fingertips — this, long before Braille newspapers were available.'

Thanks, Christina. Part two comes tomorrow...