Narrative Drive

Part of a writer's job is to drive the narrative of his story through to the end, keeping the readers interested all the while. Authors J.D. Salinger and Russell Smith are both incredibley effective at this.

In Smith's short story "Home", the drive is initiated in the first sentence, "What you have to do is escape your family." Immediately, this makes the reader curious as to what this story is about. Is it about growing up? Leaving home? Dealing with parental issues?
The answer is revealed gradually throughout the rest of his story. It becomes apparent that the main character ("you", in this case, as this story is written, unusually, in the second person) is visiting home after being away at university. The story details the subdued chaos of a familiar bar on a friday night in the holiday season.
A female character is introduced, whom "you" find attractive. She makes two or three appearances throughout the night, adding depth and forward motion to the plot, making us want to know if "you" will make a move, although suspecting that "you" won't.
In between the scenes with this girl, the narrative is driven forward by old friends catching up on each others lives. We find out a little bit about other characters throughout the night, as well as about the bar the story takes place in, which keeps us interested.
After the bar-fight climax, "you" make a connection with the choker-art-college girl, smiling at each other across the street. This brings closure to the girl's part of the narrative, as well as the story, which is supposed to seem warm and familiar to us.

J.D. Salinger's "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" takes on a darker mood. It describes the last vacation of Seymour and Muriel, a young couple whose relationship has been unfortunately altered by Seymour's post traumatic stress syndrome after his war time experience.
The narrative is set rolling by the many references in Muriel's conversation with her mother, to Seymour's odd behaviour. Something about driving and trees, and something about what Seymour tried to do with granny's chair are mentioned to peak the readers curiousity in the mental health of Seymour's character. Those vague reference give us something to grab on to and want to know more about, so we keep reading.
In the second section, we are kept wondering what exactly is going on by the seemingly normal behaviour which Seymour exhibits while around Sybil. Only towards the end of this section does he become increasingly creepy, kissing Sybil's feet, and making her jealous, talking about another child. The narrative is driven forward as the reader wonders whether or not Seymour will make a giant faux pas with Sybil, or whether he will be normal. The foot kissing incident seals the deal.
In the third section, Seymour shows his true "shell shocked" colours, giving a woman in the elevator a hard time for looking at his feet. Readers are yet again thrown a curve ball by this sudden reversal in his behaviour. We now know that he is very mentally unstable, and are curious to see what his next move will be. Knowing that he has overstepped the boundary with Sybil, and with a reduced sense of judegment, he gets a gun out of his bag, walks over to his wife on the bed, and kills himself. The act of walking to his wife's bed makes it seem at first as if he will kill her, perhaps then abducting Sybil, but in the last line of the story, it is revealed that Seymour deals himself the fatal shot instead.

Why Crime Fiction Is Good For You

In Ian Rankin's piece "Why Crime Fiction Is Good Ior You", he outlines a number of important points to consider when writing or reading crime fiction. Most importantly, he states that the main ingredients of crime fiction are violence, sudden reversals, mystery, deception, and moral dilemma, among others. He also makes clear that crime fiction is not meant to be real life. For example, Ranking claims that crime fiction death "never happens without a reason and the causes of death never goes unpunished," whereas with real life death, "we never know what killed off our happiness". He also says that crime fiction is the perfect tool for the dissection of society, allowing writers to tackle darker issues, such as corruption, exploitation, child abuse, violence, murder, jealousy, and revenge. "It enters into dangerous territory ... and so stirs up emotional responses we might not otherwise feel." Rankin believes that the true spirit of the crime novel, whether or not the reader realizes it, is anarchic, and fits the definition of satire as well.
Relating what Rankin has just said about crime writing to some of his own works, we find that he most definitely adheres to his own principles. In his short story, "The Hanged Man", Rankin includes multiple sudden reversals, as well as mystery, deception, moral dilemma, and violence.
The violence comes in the protagonists description of his past murders, rather than an account of the on he has just been sent to carry out.
The first sudden reversal occurs when Mort gives up control of the conversation with Gypsy Rosa. She then has some power over him. Another come when Mort finds out Gypsy Rosa is his mother. Not only does it reverse his feelings towards her, but it reverses his feelings towards his father/boss. Mort says "I'll kill him," meaning that he'll kill the opposite person than he was supposed to.
Mystery is brought into the story in a number of ways. We never get to know the protagonists real name, as well as the relationship he has with his father and recently-discovered mother. We don't learn much about the father either, apart from the fact that he is someone everybody fears, and that he raped Mort's mother. It is kept from us that Mort is actually Gypsy Rosa's son, right till the end.
Mort's father deceived him by trying to trick him into killing his mother, but the plan backfired. Now Mort is facing a moral dilemma, as to whether or not kill his mother and/or his father. He was tasked to kill his mother, but the "tasker" was his father, while his mother has just revealed to him his true past, and he is reeling in the truth of the moment.