Are Memories Reliable? by Connie Berry

 

My latest Kate Hamilton mystery, The Shadow of Memory, explores the lingering impact of the past upon the present and the differing memories people have of the same event.

I experienced those differing memories this past weekend as a high school friend and his wife came to stay with us on their way home from a Road Scholar event in Door County, Wisconsin. As we chatted about our high school years, it became obvious we have very different memories and impressions of those long-ago days. So much so that we joked we must have gone to different high schools.

One of his memories was news to me. Apparently, in our senior year, a new student appeared at Auburn High School in Rockford, Illinois, and joined the football team. The coach of the team asked my friend, Jim, who had a car and who lived not far from this young man, to drive him to and from football practice. One day in early fall, he arrived at the boy’s house to pick him up, only to be told by his mother that he wouldn’t be going to football practice that day. In fact, he wouldn’t be returning to school at all. He’d been arrested for killing and dismembering a girl. He’s still in jail, according to Jim.

 Here’s the thing: I’d never heard that story in my life. Why not? It was in the local newspapers, and my mother read the newspaper from cover to cover every morning. Why didn’t she say something? Was she protecting me from shocking news? Why didn’t the principal of the school make some announcement? Most importantly, why hadn’t any of my friends said something? Yes, it was a different time back then, before social media and twenty-four-hour news, but a murder that shocking should have rocked the whole city, right? It’s a mystery.

That mystery reminds me that in writing a mystery, authors can make use of the fact that every witness to a crime will have a different memory of that event. As police professionals know, if everyone has precisely the same memory, their testimonies might be dodgy. People tend to remember things that make a significant emotional impact. That means that what a character remembers can be a wonderful way to add complexity to a plot and to reveal character

Have you ever remembered something very differently than someone else who was there?

Authors, how have you used differing memories to deepen character or plot?