[BRIEF NOTE] Tourism and Murder
Mar. 1st, 2006 06:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldThe recent murder in the Mexican resort city of Cancun of visiting Canadians Domenico and Annunziata Ianiero has caused quite a controversy here, not least because of suspicions over the integrity of the investigation and the strong doubts about whether the two visiting Canadian women named by the Mexican police as likely suspects are, in fact, professional killers.
The murder of two happy middle-aged Canadians visiting Mexico for their daughter's wedding isn't Dreiser's American Tragedy. What it is, instead, is demonstration of the truth of John Ralston Saul's bon mot in his The Doubter's Companion that Florida (and by extension the Caribbean basin) is the potential irredenta where Canadians went in search of warmth. The further complications--alleged police corruption and incompetence, the transgression of the murder's simultaneity with some of the most intimate rites of the ideal Canadian family, the pretty scared women who deny their involvement--just add spice. Something reminds me particularly strongly of Muriel Spark's marvellously chilling 1970 novel The Driver's Seat, and of that novel's conclusion.
We can't forget that Lise wanted to die, and that, in fact, the poor man who killed her was a Nova Scotian, like her a person from the cold North visiting the warm South. Travel makes so much possible.
The murder of two happy middle-aged Canadians visiting Mexico for their daughter's wedding isn't Dreiser's American Tragedy. What it is, instead, is demonstration of the truth of John Ralston Saul's bon mot in his The Doubter's Companion that Florida (and by extension the Caribbean basin) is the potential irredenta where Canadians went in search of warmth. The further complications--alleged police corruption and incompetence, the transgression of the murder's simultaneity with some of the most intimate rites of the ideal Canadian family, the pretty scared women who deny their involvement--just add spice. Something reminds me particularly strongly of Muriel Spark's marvellously chilling 1970 novel The Driver's Seat, and of that novel's conclusion.
We can't forget that Lise wanted to die, and that, in fact, the poor man who killed her was a Nova Scotian, like her a person from the cold North visiting the warm South. Travel makes so much possible.
