The Mysteries of the Seal

Chief Inspector Seal

The Random Animal’s long absence has a simple explanation: alien abduction. Usually such abductions occur in compressed inter-galactic time, so that the abductee returns in seconds without any sense of time lost and with only a vague sense of having been used in various sexually-curious experiments. This the abduction felt more like staying in a dark November room with a cold and trying to meet several unexpected work deadlines.

But several mystery novels that featured animals were consumed: False Mermaid by Erin Hart and Bad Intentions by Norwegian writer Karin Fossum. Neither one is specifically focused on animals, so read them for their suspense and ambiance rather than for sustained attention to animal issues. Nonetheless, they both reveal how humans imaginatively and literally use animals to help them negotiate human dilemmas.

Erin Hart’s mysteries feature the anthropological anthropologist, Nora Gavin, who travels back and forth between her Minnesota home and the bogs of Ireland, where she solves the ancient crimes behind bodies unearthed from peat. In False Mermaid, however, the mystery is much closer: that of her beautiful actress sister, Triona, five years earlier. Nora believes she knows the perpetrator, Triona’s slickly handsome husband, but can find no proof. It also seems there was something slippery and constantly changing about her sister’s character and behavior. Like the mermaids who fascinated her, was Triona lovely one moment and dangerous another, tempting others toward destruction?

This murder is set against Nora’s Irish experiences and her interest in songs about mermaids and seals that come ashore to become human wives but then slip away again—“selkies.” In one song the mythical creature who “abandons the love of life,” disappearing to human company, is named as a very specific woman, Mary Heaney, who left behind children, Patrick and Mary. As Nora contemplates the strange history, maybe even crime, behind the ballad, her eleven-year-old niece Elizabeth lives in Seattle with her murder-suspect father, and consoles herself over her mother’s loss with a stolen book called A Selkie’s Child and by going to the bay to commune with a real seal who seems taken with her.

The novel gathers suspense with two love interests for Nora (one American, one Irish), oversexed and jealous lovers, obsessions about past violence, the use of illicit drugs, a child caught between warring relatives, and transnational chases. Seals appear and disappear as a hint that something in the universe, perhaps something benevolent, is watching. While there are intimations of supernatural presences, the problems of human passion remain the focus. The animal is more important as an emblem and possibility. There are no interjections about what happens when seals are exposed to pollution or when people turn against them because they despoil a beach. The woman/seal interchange is beguiling, but a more plausible magic is to believe that seals and Labrador retrievers are the shape changers (not always much difference in their shapes.) Think about it. When I’ve kayaked among seals (not myself turning into one), their big round heads and eyes and curious looks, not to mention the bark, recall Labs who jump in the water and hold up their heads, waiting for some stick action. The Lab-seal. 

I forget, was I a mermaid or a Pinniped?

So the seals in the novel seem soulful and tender—answering the characters’ desires to find empathy and acceptance. The myths of mermaids and selkies belong to the human fascination with metamorphosis, with the wish to take on an animal’s mysterious powers. In the tales Hart includes, the metamorphosis involves loss. The seal who becomes human must leave her old life, perhaps forever, and submit to being a wife. The woman who becomes seal returns to freedom but must abandon what was loved.  To be fully human is a compromise.

The False Mermaid has a driving plot with the allure of myth and romance. If you like forensic detail blended with Celtic romance and Irishmen who play fiddles and flutes, enjoy.

Soon—Fossum and the redemptive cat.