Microsoft Excel in Contemporary Crime Fiction

Always excellent

You'll often find advice online for budding crime writers to plan their novels or keep track of their characters in Excel. I find this really funny and sweet but what I really find funny and sweet is when Excel crops up in crime fiction. The genre is my weakness—my Achilles genre—but I get strength from its specialness.

Poe had one more job to do. And this time he needed Bradshaw.

She had used Google Maps to find the building they wanted: a three-storey Georgian townhouse on Dover Street in Mayfair. Like the rest of the houses on the street, it had been built with pale limestone. It was symmetrical and balanced, like it had been designed using Excel.

Dead Ground, M. W. Craven

“It wasn’t like any home screen Poe had seen before. There were no icons to click on and no background photograph. All there was were rows and rows of text, like an Excel spreadsheet.

‘Right, Mr Holmes,’ Bradshaw said, ‘let’s see what you’ve been hiding.”

Dead Ground, M. W. Craven

George spent the next week glued to the chair in front of his computer, plugging new figures into his Excel spreadsheet, moving them about from column to column like some elaborate chess game. If he put off the new photocopier acquisition until next year, he discovered, the dumb waiter could be fixed, but replacing the compact shelving and the halon system that protected the manuscript vault was simply out of the question, either now or in the foreseeable future.

"Safety First," Marcia Talley (short story)

There's been another one, Frank realized. He dutifully did his research, then added another name to his Excel spreadsheet.

He was up to five now.

Life of Secrets: A Suspenseful FBI Crime Thriller Novel, D. F. Hart

"We will need a list of your employees, the ones who had contact with Mrs. Creasy."

"Let me print that for you." She booted her computer, quickly scanned for the appropriate file, and had an Excel spreadsheet of employees with addresses and phone numbers printed within two minutes."

Hanging Softly in the Night, Maria Elena Alonso-Sierra

...I was running out of time, so I hit Open and watched an Excel spreadsheet fill the screen before me.

I figured I would discover dozens of URLs. Porn sites? Chat rooms? More terrible photos of terrified little boys?

The Neighbor, Lisa Gardner

She had an idea. She took her phone over to where Sharna Khouri wrestled with an Excel spreadsheet.

On her first day in Homicide—what was it, ten years ago now?—Jackie had been in the meal room looking for a coffee mug when a blowsy woman with double eyeslashes and overfilled lips appeared.

Shadow City, Natalie Conyer

"What d’you think of the hostel?" he asks me, shovelling more food into his mouth. "I’m still a bit pissed off with the Omni. I could swear I made the booking."

"I don’t mind it, actually," I say, thinking of the Excel spreadsheet, of our budget. "Though I didn't sleep that well. I thought I heard people arguing in the night—did you hear anything?"

The Trip, Phoebe Morgan