BEST BOOKS ON... FEMALE DETECTIVES
‘NEVERTHELESS, she persisted,’ has, in the past year, become a feminist rallying cry, emblazoned across everything from T-shirts to tattoos.
Persistence, doggedness, obduracy — these are traits I rather admire in my fellow women. Few characters better embody these qualities than those fictional detectives who, with their shrewd intelligence, unclouded observational skills, empathy and sheer stubbornness, always, in the end, catch the criminal.
Take Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple. Dismiss Jane Marple as a doddery old spinster of the parish of St Mary Mead at your peril.
Marple is introduced in novel form in 1930’s The Murder At The Vicarage: ‘Miss Marple is a white-haired old lady with a gentle appealing manner — Miss Wetherby is a mixture of vinegar and gush. Of the two, Miss Marple is the more dangerous.’
In Nemesis, Marple concedes: ‘It has just happened that I have found myself in the vicinity of murder rather more often than would seem normal.’ She never misses a trick or fails to catch a revealing, tossedaside remark. She will worry away at a mystery until she reaches the truth. Then it’s time for a cup of strong tea or a stiff sherry. Bliss.
Another female star of Golden Age Detective Fiction is Harriet Vane. Dorothy L. Sayers’s glamorous detective made her first appearance in 1930, in the Lord Peter Wimsey whodunnit Strong Poison.
An Oxford-educated, self-made author forced to forge her own path after her parents’ untimely deaths, Vane plays second fiddle to no one.
When she finally agrees to marry Wimsey, theirs becomes a marriage and detective team of equals.
In recent fiction, Susie Steiner’s Manon Bradshaw — protagonist of the acclaimed Missing, Presumed and Persons Unknown — is a compelling police detective heroine to root for. She is clever, mordantly funny, highly moral, driven and confident in the workplace, yet often adrift in her personal life.
Yes, life can be untidy, but one of the abiding comforts of reading crime fiction is that, here, there is always a satisfying resolution.