Welcome to Help From My Friends Friday. Today’s guest is award-winning author Sue Hinkin, a fellow member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime. She joins us to promote her new release, The Mermaid Brokers. More importantly, why she felt compelled to incorporate the subject into her Vega and Middleton series. Please welcome Author Sue Hinkin. ~ Donnell
by Sue Hinkin
That is the Island of the Sirens. Circe warned me to steer clear of it, for the Sirens are beautiful but deadly. –Odysseus
A mermaid found a swimming lad,
Picked him for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,
Laughed; and plunging down
forgot in cruel happiness
That even lovers drown.
–William Butler Yeats, A Man Young and Old, 1926
I had just finished my colleague Peg Brantley’s excellent novel, Trafficked, when a softcore porn site featuring mermaids randomly popped up on my desktop. I don’t follow pornography and find it quite depressing in general so I had no idea that mermaid porn was a thing. Evidently, it’s a big thing. Immediately, I thought of the sirens leading men to watery deaths in Homer’s The Odyssey, of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, and of the Disneyfied version featuring teen mermaid Ariel. With these stories in mind, the theme of my 4th thriller, The Mermaid Broker, began to take shape.
Across cultures, we’ve always been attracted to the dangerous woman archetype. The depiction of mermaids is a great example. Beautiful, young, naked-breasted females with lush hair and seductive singing voices, trolling the seas to tempt hapless sailors away from safety–is a powerful trope. Psychologists agree that the deep-seated male fear that a woman is going to abandon them or otherwise destroy them, is universal. The mermaid world of the ocean, symbolic of the feminine, of creation and our amniotic beginnings, is the perfect setting to stoke such terrors.
Some of the earliest reported stories of mythological mer-creatures are
found in Babylonian folklore from thousands of years ago. As you’d expect, cultures dependent on rivers, lakes and seas for their livelihood are particularly rife with stories of strong watery women who drown their lovers–sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose. Many civilizations, however, including the Chinese, Persians and Irish, more often depicted mermaids as good-willed folk who are extremely shy but also as curious about life above the sea as humans are about life below.
Mermaid popularization went mainstream in 1837 with the fairytale The Little Mermaid written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. This story is the anti-feminist version of mermaid tales where the Little Mermaid rescues a handsome prince who stumbles overboard during a party. She returns him to the shore, falls in love with him but she must return to the sea.
Longing for the prince and an eternal soul that only humans can possess, she visits the conniving Sea Witch who sells her a draught giving the mermaid human legs in exchange for her tongue and beautiful voice. The witch warns the Little Mermaid that once she becomes a human, she will never be able to return to the sea.
Consuming the potion renders the Little Mermaid mute, yet when she recovers, she has fully human legs and is a mesmerizing dancer as well. Unfortunately, the girl will constantly feel as if she is walking on sharp knives. In addition, she will obtain a soul only if she wins the love of the prince and marries him. Otherwise, at dawn on the day after he marries someone else, the Little Mermaid will die of a broken heart and dissolve into sea foam. That’s pretty much what happens, until she wakes up sometime later on a warm beach as a “Daughter of the Air” who, because of her enduring kindness, is allowed to finally claim a human soul after putting in 300 years of good deeds.
Disney took this fable and spun it into the movie and billion-dollar marketing franchise. Unlike the original, the Disney mermaid, Ariel, doesn’t endure the knife pain curse, magically has her voice restored, and ultimately wins Prince Eric’s love. The pair marry with the mermaid’s sisters and father, King Triton, smiling approval. The bride and groom live happily ever after. In the most recent incarnation, Disney’s live action remake of The Little Mermaid will bring Lin-Manuel Miranda together with legendary composer Alan Menken to hop on the Ariel bandwagon once again. Production began in December 2020.
This is a far cry from the ending of the Danish folktale where the Little Mermaid has a brutally grim life, must give up her identity and never has a ‘happily ever after’ let alone a movie deal. Perhaps this is why a new generation of female novelists are placing the mermaid archetype at the center of their fiction. The Surface Breaks, Louise O’Neill’s feminist retelling of Andersen’s fairytale; The Gloaming, “a queer mermaid love story” by Kirsty Logan; along with the The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar, which takes place in London during the Georgian 1700s, are all claiming reader interest and success.
My quirky thriller, The Mermaid Brokers, continues with a feminist interpretation of the mermaid trope. TV journalists, Bea Middleton and pregnant Lucy Vega, take the roles of the classic mermaid “sisters.” They navigate the dark net of sex trafficking in Southern California to find Isabelle, a bright young high school biology teacher who has been trafficked into an international sex tourism ring where she must become a mermaid to be exploited and murdered. Bea and Lucy marshal their resources to save the tough, smart Isabelle who has been pushed to the limit and barely survives. Isabelle doesn’t have a happily ever but she isn’t required to do good deeds for 300 years to get her soul back, either.
The Mermaid Broker by Sue Hinkin at www.suehinkin.com
On Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TV4YJHD/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Mermaid Art from Many Cultures on my Pinterest Board: https://www.pinterest.com/suehinkin/the-mermaid-broker-by-sue-hinkin-2021/
Interesting Books Featuring the Mermaid Archetype in a Variety of Genres:
The Surface Breaks by Louise O’Neill (Irish feminist retelling of the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale)
A Song Below Water by Bethany Morrow (Fantastical Black sirens, friendship and self-discovery)
Sukey and the Mermaid by R.D. San Souci (Children 5-8, mermaid of color)
The Deep by Rivers Solomon (Middle Grade African-American)
The Gloaming by Kristy Neal (LGBTQ mermaid love story)
The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar (Historical, UK bestseller)
To Kill a Kingdom by Alexandra Christo (YA page-turner)
Elijah’s Mermaid by Essie Fox (Victorian Gothic)
Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué (Classic French fairytale novella)
The Pisces by Melissa Broder (Contemporary women’s fiction)
The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd (Literary self-discovery)
The Moon and the Sun by Vonda N. McIntyre (Historical sci-fi, Nebula award winner)
The Mermaid Broker by Sue Hinkin (Dark, quirky thriller)
Ingo by Helen Dunmore (Children’s novel, mystery & magic)
The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey (Caribbean lit)
The Mermaid Handbook by Carolyn Turgeon (History, recipes, costumes and fun)
Mermaid-Themed Movies for your Viewing Enjoyment
Splash (1984) Tom Hanks & Daryl Hannah comedy
The Little Mermaid (1989) Disney animated fantasy
The Little Mermaid (2018) Is the woman in the traveling circus a mermaid?
Sabrina Down Under (1996) Teenage witch at Great Barrier Reef
The Lady in the Water (2006) M. Night Shyamalan’s fantasy psychological thriller
Aquamarine (2006) Teen romcom
Ondine (2009) Irish romantic drama where a selkie brings hope and love
Aquaman (2018) Superhero merman
Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948) A Bostonian and his wife catch a mermaid
Magic Island (1995) Family adventure with pirates and mermaids
Miranda (1948) Erotic Italian comedy—fisherman lands a mermaid
Neptune’s Daughter (1949) Romantic musical comedy, synchronized swimming
Peter Pan (2003) Wendy meets mermaids in Neverland
The Mermaid (2016) Chinese action adventure
The 13th Year (1999) Disney Channel—boy discovers his mother is a mermaid
Beach Blanket Bingo (1965) Most popular of the Beach Blanket franchise, romcom
THE MERMAID BROKER
About the Author: Sue Hinkin is a former television news photographer, NBC-TV Art Department manager, as well as a college teacher and administrator. A graduate of the American Film Institute and long-time L.A. resident, she now lives in Littleton, Colorado. The Mermaid Broker is her 4th Vega and Middleton thriller. See more at www.suehinkin.com.
About the Book: Bea and Lucy navigate the dark net of sex tourism to find a young high school biology teacher before she falls victim to a disgraced ocean scientist’s sado-sexual mermaid fantasies and throws her to the sharks, literally.
Last seen heading out of Ventura Harbor with a SCUBA group bound for the Channel Islands, Santa Monica High School Marine Biology teacher, Isabelle Abbott, has vanished.
She finds herself prisoner in the dark bowels of an underground aquarium complex. Once used by the military for marine mammal research, dolphins are no longer denizens of the big tanks. Instead, a menagerie of freaky razor-toothed predators including Piscum Auratus, a genetically engineered gold shark the size of an SUV, swims in psychotic circles.
To her horror, Isabelle discovers that she and a group of traumatized young women have been trafficked to become mermaids for an international sex tourism ring working out of Southern California. They are only days away from being raped by men willing to pay huge sums for the mermaid experience. Worst of all, to eliminate her as a witness, when the tourists have had their sick fun, more obscenity follows. Isabelle will be tossed to the ravenous monsters in a snuff finale.
Tenacious news reporter Bea Middleton and savvy photographer Lucy Vega, team with Ventura Detective Macintosh Wu. Can they stop the insanity before Isabelle and the others become nothing more than blood in the water?
Sue, thank you for being my guest today. I enjoyed The Burn Patient, and my first taste of Vega and Middleton. And of course I’ve read Trafficked by Peg Brantley as both a beta reader and the published version. It sounds to me as though the history of mermaids has gone from many inceptions, from the siren version, to the fairy tale, to the grim, to the ultimate corruption and back again? Looking forward to gaining an education in the Mermaid Broker.
So interesting to get the background about mermaids. I loved Splash and The Little Mermaid, but that is as far as I have gone. #2son loved Ariel. A lot.
This was terribly interesting! Thank you, Sue. Just got your book. I noticed that you put out a book a year, always on April 1st. That’s hilarious. Can’t wait to read!
Vicki, thanks for stopping by! Darynda, I didn’t realize that. What a great way to establish your deadlines. Sue, talk about this, please.
Glad April Fools Day pub dates may have brought a smile to your face, Darynda. The “fool” Is really the childlike spirit of risk-taking, adventure and play. So I embrace the fool. In the Ryder deck of tarot cards, the fool also has a little white dog at his heels like my bichon rescue pup. ?
And Vicki—glad you find the mermaid trope interesting. It’s a classic. Check out my mermaid images in Pinterest and you’ll see depictions from many cultures and eras.