WOMEN OF MYSTERY

DABNEY G. HART

A good mystery offers more than just clues.

I read mysteries. Many people have a problem with that—they see mysteries as a lesser form of writing, something to be sneered at. But I like novels with strong female protagonists, and certain mystery writers, especially women writers who create series with continuing characters, are a consistent source of this type of writing. A mystery offers a beginning, a middle, and an end—elements lacking in much of modern fiction—and it also has a resolution. Mystery writers involve me, inviting me to solve the riddle as the plot unfolds. And modern mysteries often address important social issues, such as homelessness and the impact of new technologies. In today’s fiction, the crime novel is where law, justice, and society intersect.

Crime fiction is also big business. In 1995, over 63 million mystery and detective novels were purchased. An estimated 1,500 mystery titles were published in the United States in 1998. Over the course of the 1990s, an estimated 500 or more new mystery series will begin. Even US senators (Barbara Mikulski, D-MD) and members of the Cosmos Club (Richard North Patterson) write mysteries.

Women writers account for many of the mystery titles—over 3,500 series mysteries have been written by women since 1878. In 1993 and 1994, over 200 new titles with series detective characters were released by women authors. In 1992, 40 percent of all mysteries published were by women. In 1995, titles published in paperback, a segment more sensitive to market demands than hardback sales, were nearly evenly divided between men and women authors.

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE CRIME STORY

The crime story as a literary form has developed along with other fiction, shaped by social events. This development is described by Julian Symons in Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel. A chronology of the crime story, adapted from Symons, includes:

1) Stories about detectives as protectors of society, or as intellectual Supermen (Edgar Allen Poe).

2) The idea that the Superman detective alone might operate above or outside the processes of law (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle).

3) The shift from short story to novel and the emergence of women writers whose detectives followed the Holmes pattern and whose work emphasized the importance of preserving the existing state of society (the “Golden Age,” from Doyle through Agatha Christie and the Second World War).

4) The post-war attempts to break the “rules” laid down in the Golden Age.

5) The development of crime novels from realistic portraits of society to the psychological investigation of an individual.

Crime stories have been around for a long time; some would say that the first written account was the murder of Abel by Cain, as told in Genesis. Certainly, elements of mystery writing are to be found in many early novels. The Castle of Otronto by Horace Walpole (1784), for example, is filled with castles, dungeons, and dark passages, all scenes set for the strange and unexpected—a Gothic novel. In The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), probably the first Gothic novel by a woman, Ann Radcliffe creates tension by relating events that seem supernatural but are not. In keeping with other stories of the period (and continuing in many of the romance books today), the story ends with the heroine, sobbing and fainting, escaping from her perils and falling into the arms of her lover, whom she happily marries. Of course, the hidden relationships on which the plot depends would have been revealed several hundred pages earlier if she hadn’t kept fainting.

It is Edgar Allan Poe, however, who is considered the originator of the serial crime story. When Poe wrote “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” in 1841, he created Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin, the original eccentric detective who succeeds where the incompetent police fail. Poe called “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” which was serialized in Graham’s Magazine, a story of “ratiocination,” or logical reasoning. A careful analysis of apparently unimportant details is a main feature of the story. The elements of detection had occurred in previous stories, but played a minor role. In this new genre, the descriptions of people and places were relegated to secondary importance, introduced only when necessary to solve the problems posed; the genius of Dupin was more important. “Murders” was followed by “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” serialized from November 1842 to February 1843. This established another now-traditional gambit, the fictionalization of an actual incident, as well as the detective who solves the case without ever leaving his room. Among the other literary devices that Poe introduced to detective fiction were the locked room, ballistics, and blood tests, as well as the narration by an admiring friend or colleague.

In writing the Sherlock Holmes short stories and novels, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle continued many of the forms used by Poe. Although Doyle wrote 56 short stories and 4 novels about Sherlock Holmes, he used only a small number of basic plots. Early detection fiction did not go in much for murder. Instead, Doyle stuck to such plot devices as the returned avenger, the stolen inheritance, the secret society, and a few others. Doyle also introduced humor mixed in with the serious elements, enabling the stories to be both entertaining and moral. He expanded the role of the admiring narrator, in this case, Dr. Watson.

WOMEN WRITERS AND DETECTIVES

The first female writer of crime fiction was Anna Katherine Green, who wrote The Leavenworth Case in 1878. Green also introduced Violet Strange, a woman detective, but this character was not well received. More accepted was Miss Amelia Butterworth, an old maid of good family and uncertain age. Miss Butterworth knew all about the family at the center of the mystery, and kept her thoughts to herself.

Gradually, though, lady detectives came into vogue. In their search for new types of detectives, late Victorian writers embraced this character. In 1894, Catherine Pirkis’ The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective; M. E. Braddon’s Thou Art the Man, featuring Coralie Urquhart; Charleton Savage’s The Beech Court Mystery with “The Squirrel”; and Mrs. George Corbett’s When the Sea Gives Up Its Dead, A Thrilling Detective Story, with Annie Cory, all were published. For the next 20 years, the female detective became a common variant for writers looking for something a bit out of the usual character pattern of the post-Doyle detective.

The turn-of-the-century vogue for women detectives reflected an attempt on the part of publishers to recapture the female reading public. The setting and details of stories like Mary Roberts Rinehart’s The Circular Staircase (1908), for example, portray the trivia of household affairs and make incidental points like the heroine’s valuation of her Spode over her Limoges china. Rinehart’s books belong to the “had I but known” school—the first crime stories that have the air of being written specifically for maiden aunts. Rinehart also introduced what has come to be known as “fem jep,” in which the heroine is in jeopardy and has to be rescued or, more recently, has to rescue herself.

The lady typist or office worker also emerges in this period as a popular character type and shows a female character outside the home. The female sleuths fit into the general search for unconventional or eccentric characters to turn into detectives. Many of these novels had “lady” or “woman” in the title, including Clarice Dyke, the Female Detective (1899) and Constance Dunlap, Woman Detective (1916). Authors had discovered that simply being a woman was a great disguise; few people could be as inconspicuous as a woman in the male-dominated world of crime and detection.

THE GOLDEN AGE

On a social level, between 1890 and 1940, crime literature offered a reasoning world in which those who tried to disturb the established order were discovered and punished. The values put forward by the detective story from the time of Sherlock Holmes to the beginning of World War II are those of a class in society that felt it had everything to lose by social change. A new group of “Golden Age” authors appeared after 1920. They saw the detective story as a puzzle to be solved by author, detective, and reader together; the social order was seen as fixed and immutable. Many of their novels were casually anti-Semitic, anti-“foreign,” and basically anti-anyone who did not belong to the upper-middle class. The murdered, murderer, and all the suspects were part of the same social group. The motive for the crime was personal and, within the context, rational. The chief interest of the story was the mental analysis, and most of the detectives were eccentric amateurs. There was no love interest and no sex.

Several of the best-known authors of this period were British women: Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Marjorie Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, and Patricia Highsmith, for example. Their protagonists were mostly male, or if they were female, they were usually frail, elderly, and rather passive. These were non-threatening, non-aggressive women.

Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller, known after her marriage as Agatha Christie, was serving in a hospital infirmary during World War I when she decided to write a story in the Sherlock Holmes style. Her first story was The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1920. She knew hospital pharmacy routine so she made the murder by poison. She had observed Belgian refugees in a camp nearby so she made her detective a Belgian, Hercule Poirot. Miss Jane Marple, modeled after Christie’s grandmother, didn’t come along until 1930, in The Murder at the Vicarage. Miss Marple realizes that there is not a crime or wicked deed in the world that does not remind her of something that has happened in St. Mary Mead, the small village where she has spent her entire life.

In contrast to Christie, who emphasized the technique of the detective, Dorothy Sayers had a more literary style. Gaudy Night is considered to be Sayers’ best work and is certainly her most popular. Over half of the group of mostly women in a recent Smithsonian Associates class on “Mysterious Women” had read Gaudy Night more than twice. Women tend to like Harriet Vane, who appears in several Sayers novels and eventually marries the detective, Peter Wimsey, and identify with her wish to be independent. She is not the protagonist, but she is a continuing character and she foreshadows later strong and independent women.

For many post-war readers, however, the Golden Age detective was irrelevant and ineffective. The assumption of the classic detective story was that human affairs are ruled by reason. After World War II, this assumption no longer held. Many of the current writers, both women and men, are now middle-aged; they went through the 1960s and came out of them with a particular kind of social consciousness, so they write about problems in modern society.

MODERN WOMEN WRITERS

Many of the women now writing crime novels were strongly influenced at an early age by the tales of Nancy Drew (nominally written by Carolyn Keene, who is actually a succession of writers) and Judy Bolton (by Margaret Sutton) that began in the 1930s. For readers, both young and old, the independent spirit of these characters is still attractive. Nancy Drew was the first example of a “strong” female in a mystery story. The Secret of the Old Clock, published in 1930, showed Drew as a modern young woman who drove a sports car, voted, and approached dangerous situations with courage, intelligence, and tenacity. She became a mythic character in the psyches of the American women who followed her adventures when they were growing up.

The new female protagonists display fascination with human motivation, with the emotional dramas of splintered relationships, and with the corrosive friction between the individual and society. The women are changed by their experiences. In contrast, Jane Marple doesn’t change through the Christie books—she never ages, she never learns. In the new genre, sometimes these changes are the product of a changing life situation. The change may be within the context of one book, but it occurs especially in the novels that are part of a series. The central character seems to undergo the greatest growth when she becomes psychologically connected to the crime and the victim. An example of this growth through connection is in Deception on His Mind, by Elizabeth George (1998). In this novel, Sgt. Barbara Havers of Scotland Yard, who was originally an assistant to the major, male, protagonist, emerges as a more independent investigator, resulting from her involvement with a young Pakistani girl. These protagonists are risk-takers, and their complex humanity sets them apart from earlier protagonists.

The mystery stories of today are divided, basically, into two types: the “cozy,” or traditional, mystery and the more “hard-boiled” novel of crime. There are also many sub-genres, which can fall into either category. Originally women wrote only cozies, but now female authors are tackling the entire gamut of the crime novel. Virtually any type of character is to be found, from black lesbian stockbroker (the Virginia Kelly series by Nikki Baker) to caterer and single mother (the Goldy Bear series by Diane Mott Davidson) to vampire hunter (the Anita Blake series by Laurell K. Hamilton). Female protagonists abound, but women writers also create strong male characters. Ruth Rendell, who wrote her first Detective Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford mystery in 1964, has said that her protagonist was a man because “like most women I am still very much caught up in a web that one writes about men because Men are the people and we are the others.” In general, the mystery novel falls into one or more of the following categories:

The traditional novel. The traditional, or “cozy,” mystery is a novel of manners with an aura of crime. Written largely in the tradition of Agatha Christie and other Golden Age authors, these mysteries have an enclosed setting, little explicit violence, and a good puzzle to be solved. A cat is optional, but if it is present, nothing bad must happen to it. The traditional mystery is the story of intimate relationships skewed by anger or jealousy, fear or cruelty, and the focus is on broken relationships. The traditional mystery has an amateur detective; is set firmly in its place, which is probably not a big city but may be a city neighborhood; has an emphasis on real people rather than on some object or grand theory or atmosphere; and is not a horror novel. This type of story “plays fair” in that all the central characters are introduced as soon as possible after the story opens, the method of murder is not some wildly arcane poison or outlandish weapon, and all the clues are given. They often seem to have plays on words in the titles—such as Grime and Punishment or Silence of the Hams by Jill Churchill. These are the books you can give to your slightly uptight mother or aunt. While the women protagonists may be independent, they enjoy having men in their lives, and several are senior citizens (e.g., Agatha Raisin, London advertising retiree, written by M.C. Beaton).

The hard-boiled, or PI, crime novel. The hard-boiled mysteries may have violence and lots of action, but chiefly the term indicates a mood, a connection to what Raymond Chandler called the “mean streets.” These novels share an uncompromisingly tough world view—the good guys win, but it is a bitter victory. The novels in this form, which is essentially American, relate the story of the protagonist and the story of the murder that is solved. The protagonist is an honorable person who tries to remain uncorrupted in a corrupt world. The women characters of these novels have little relation to the earlier female detectives, such as the quiet and unassuming Miss Jane Marple. The female protagonists often are policewomen, private investigators, or some other type of law enforcement officer. Many of these are feminists, as opposed to female. The feminist style of protagonist is almost exclusively American, although some British writers are beginning to write hard-boiled novels. An example is Val McDermid, author of the Kate Brannigan series, which is set in Manchester, England.

Often cited as the first of the “modern” hard-boiled women mystery writers is Marcia Muller, whose protagonist, Sharon McCone, began literary life in Edwin of the Iron Shoes (1977). Originally an investigator for a San Francisco legal cooperative, she eventually forms her own McCone Investigations. The growth in the character is apparent as she gains confidence in her own abilities and becomes more independent. This series follows the relationships of the members of the cooperative through all the novels and is a clear example of the concern of female writers with relationships.

Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone, introduced in 1982 in A is for Alibi, is given one of the best openings since “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again” (in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca [1938], another mystery written by a woman), when she says “The day before yesterday I killed someone and the fact weighs heavily on my mind.” She exemplifies the modern female private investigator in that she is willing to kill but she is concerned about the effects of that willingness on herself and others.

The police procedural. The police procedural can be a detective story or thriller, but this type of novel generally relies on the routines of police activity in order to answer the vital questions—whodunit, whydunit, or howdunit. It concentrates upon the detailed investigation of a crime from the point of view of the police. Many of today’s protagonists are, or have been, cops. Among the women represented here are Laurie Kings’ A Grave Matter, featuring Kate Martinelli, a San Francisco police inspector. These novels have few cozy attributes.

The historical crime novel. The historical mystery has become an increasingly important segment of crime literature. Under this heading also come novels that explore the presence of the past, sometimes several times past, to further explain the present. Sharon McCrumb’s novels, including She Walks These Hills (1994), The Rosewood Casket (1996), and The Ballad of Frankie Silver (1998), are set in the Southern Appalachians. This last novel relates the effects of crimes in three time periods—the present, about 30 years ago, and the colonial period. Although the nominal protagonist, Sheriff Spencer Arrowood, is male, the strong female character of Nora Bonesteel is a continuing presence. In a series that began in 1995, Diane Day has written about Caroline Fremont Jones, the owner of a San Francisco typewriting service at the turn of the last century. In the cozy vein, Elizabeth Peters (a pseudonym for Egyptologist Barbara Mertz) writes amusingly about Amelia Peabody, a Victorian archeologist. Miriam Grace Monfredo created Glynis Tryon, a town librarian in Seneca Falls, New York. The first in the series, Seneca Falls Inheritance (1992), takes place at the time of the 1848 meeting there on women’s rights and expresses the writer’s concerns with the rights of women and minorities.

Traveler’s crime. The novels of many modern crime writers have a strong sense of place: Sara Paretsky’s Chicago; Marcia Muller’s San Francisco; and Margaret Maron’s North Carolina. The Peters and McCrumb series mentioned above are additional examples of another popular trend in crime fiction, the crime novel that is set in a particular location. In these novels, the setting is a large part of the story. McCrumb’s novels of the Southern Appalachians couldn’t be set anywhere else, because the atmosphere and history of the area are essential to the plots, just as is Elizabeth Peters’ Victorian Egypt. The settings in which Edna Buchanan’s Miami crime reporter Britt Montero and Julie Smith’s New Orleans police officer Skip Langdon operate are vital parts of their stories. The best of this genre offer entertaining insights into people and places.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN WOMEN AND MEN

Very few men have written mysteries with strong female protagonists. One exception is Thomas Perry, who has written a series featuring Jane Whitefield, a Seneca Indian who is half-Irish and a martial arts expert. According to Barbara Gauntt of MysteryBooks at Dupont Circle in Washington, women tend to find the character believeable while men don’t. And at one used-book store I frequent, the mysteries are separated, for some strange reason, with male writers on one side of the room and women on the other. Unfortunately, the assumption seems to be that any book with a female protagonist is written by a woman, so that male authors with only initials or even a female pseudonym are included with the female books. This probably reflects a lack of knowledge on the part of the owner, since I have never found P. D. James with the men. And the semi-cozy novels featuring Peggy O’Neill, a university campus cop, by M. D. Lake (a pseudonym for Allen Simpson, former professor of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Minnesota) are filed with the female writers.

Although women are more likely than men to read books with a female protagonist, most readers simply enjoy a good mystery. If I find a well-written mystery, I am likely to read more of the author’s work, regardless of the sex of the author or the protagonist. Crime fiction is written chiefly to entertain, but at its best it also gives new perspectives on being human—for men and women alike—just as the best of general fiction does. Mysteries build up tension; its release comes from the unraveling of the mystery and the picking up of clues, at the same time providing the reader with an intellectual exercise in the thrill of finding the solution. Mysteries raise moral issues and show that justice can happen. That’s the intellectual explanation—mostly people read mysteries just because they enjoy the characters and the plots. I, and many other women, read mysteries by women because we enjoy reading about strong women. And some men I know enjoy reading about them too.

Recommended Readings:

Gorman, Ed; Greenberg, Martin H.; Segriff, Larry; and Breen, Jon L. The Fine Art of Murder: The Mystery Reader’s Indispensable Companion. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1993.
Heising, Willetta L. Detecting Women 2: A Reader’s Guide and Checklist for Mystery Series Written by Women. Dearborn, Michigan: Purple Moon Press, 1996.
Grape, Jan; James, Dean; and Nehr, Ellen, editors. Deadly Women: The Woman Mystery Reader’s Indispensable Companion. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1998.
King, Nina (with Robin Winks). Crimes of the Scene: A Mystery Novel Guide for the International Traveler. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.
Panek, LeRoy Lad. An Introduction to the Detective Story. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Press, 1987.
Swanson, Jean, and James, Dean. By a Woman’s Hand: A Guide to Mystery Fiction by Women. New York: Berkley Books, 1994.
Symons, Julian. Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel (Third Revised Edition). New York: The Mysterious Press, 1992.

Dabney G. Hart (CC ‘90) was formerly senior environmental policy analyst with Mitretek Systems. She buys most of her mysteries at places that sell used paperback books.

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