The Boston Bombing

by Sheila Connolly

Poor Kim Jong-un.  You almost have to feel sorry for him.  His sabre-rattling was going so well; he had thousands of North Koreans parading around, waving their guns and dragging missiles around the country.  The rest of the world was sitting on the edge of their seats, biting their nails, wondering "Will he?  Won't he?" actually send a nuclear warhead somewhere.

And then along come one or two guys with a couple of pressure cookers and

some buckshot and nails, and suddenly North Korea has fallen off the map, and Boston is front and center on every news outlet in the country.  Explosive devices made of stuff that you or I could buy on any street or in any mall in Middle America.  My husband tells me you can cook up gunpowder with no exotic ingredients and no high-tech equipment, in your garage (I haven't tried it). See, it doesn't take nuclear warheads to terrify people.  The bloody deaths or maiming of some children and innocent bystanders is more than enough to make the point.

And whoever made and planted those bombs hasn't even bothered to come forward [as of the time of this writing—it's a very fluid situation].  Can't you see him (most likely it's a him, right?) sitting back and watching the wall-to-wall news coverage and gloating?  I did that! Is it a good thing or a bad thing if that feeling of personal satisfaction is enough for the perpetrator, without any grand political agenda or terrorist affiliation? 

This is not a political blog, but we are all mystery writers here, so we all choose to deal with death and fear and threats on some level.  None of us writes violent stories filled with explosions and assault weapons and stacks of bodies (and I'll confess I find it harder and harder even to read those as I grow older).  We write softer, gentler mysteries.  Yes, someone dies, but the plot revolves around finding out who killed that person, and why the killer believed that person had to die.  There are seldom convincing reasons for the killing, because killing another person is inherently wrong.

Our stories most often involve ordinary people, usually women, thrust into an investigation because finding a killer is the right thing to do.  Often one of the main characters is a law enforcement official of some sort, and that matters too, because that person carries the weight of our whole societal structure.  He or she is appointed or volunteers to keep us safe, and to pursue and root out the evil that hides within our culture.

Violence is never far from American society. Witness the heated arguments about gun control.  Private citizens may never in their lives fire an assault weapon, but they want to be able to, just in case.  In case of what?  Do they truly believe that chaos is just around the corner, and having a serious weapon will protect them?  If the entire citizenry of Boston had been carrying during the Marathon, would it have made a difference? (More likely a lot more innocent people would have been injured by terrified citizens shooting wildly.) The sad thing is, we don't feel safe, even in our own homes.  And the Marathon Bombing just reinforces that.

I have no solutions.  I write murder mysteries because killing is wrong, and I believe that it is important to show that justice can be served, even if it's only by one person at a time.