My wife, Ruth, who knows more about mysteries than almost anyone I know, has a few things on her mind. And since there's not much on mine, I figured this would be a great chance to have a guest do this. So with out further ado, but much fanfare, my wife. -- jon

Hard Boiled Women

It happened again this week. That off-hand remark, “I don’t read women authors.” How inspiring, particularly coming from a bookseller. Then came the disclaimer. “I like my mystery more hard-boiled than that.” Well as a famous fictional character once said, “Phui!” and yes, it was spelled that way.

So for everyone out there with similar feelings hopefully this column might inspire you with a few reading ideas. It really seems a shame that an author’s sex has anything at all to do with whether or not they’re read but there you go. And you are so missing out.

Women authors in mystery have always sold. In fact if you break it down they’ve always had much better sales figures in proportion to actual works than their male counterparts. Certainly though if you compare the works of a Dorothy Sayers to a Dashiell Hammett and you prefer a hard-boiled ride you want to read the Hammett. The same holds true when you compare an Amanda Cross mystery to one by Larry Block.

Then came the seventies: with Meg Chittenden and * Marcia Mueller writing mysteries that sold on one hand; Erica Jong and Marge Piercy selling female-themed books with an edge on the other. I like to think that there were other young readers out there then, reading these contemporary authors and the classic noir. The Thompsons and MacDonalds, the Cains and Spillanes and that new kid Parker. I want to think that there were young women who said to themselves, "I’m going to write a book like this some day" and in future years weren’t discouraged by my friend the bookseller and others like him. I like to think that every female author out there is writing the book they want to write - be it cozy or noir because it’s the book they want to write.

Because the ladies have been writing and what a treasure of books there are for the noir reader.

Let’s look at the evolution of Marcia Mueller’s Sharon McCone series. Her first book Edwin of the Iron Shoes is a good book. P.I. Sharon McCone is working at a non-profit law firm doing investigative work for a band of lawyers, righting the wrongs done to San Francisco's working class. Fast-forward to the nineties and Mueller’s While Other People Sleep. Sharon McCone is now a successful Private Investigator running a large firm in a yuppie neighborhood. A stalker is slowly stealing her identity. In this one series you can read, book by book, the advancement in female fiction.

In the eighties two very important people happened in female fiction. Their names are, of course. * Sara Paretsky and * Sue Grafton. Books flew off the shelf and publishers scrambled to find “Female Detective” books. Results! * Susan Dunlap’s Jill Smith series debuted in 1981 even before the aforementioned big girls. In a wonderful police procedural series injected with humor and a touch of noir, Dunlap’s series is always entertaining. The eighties also saw the first works of Liza Cody, Lia Matera, Francis Fyfield, and Elizabeth George. T.J MacGregor introduced her mostly forgotten but still appreciated Quin St. James & Mike McCleary series. Set in Florida this is a hard-boiled married couple. Judy Van Giesson wrote the beginnings of her Neil Hamel series perhaps my favorite lawyer series of them all. In the late eighties Linda Barnes was able to shrug off her Michael Spraugge amateur sleuth series for the far more compelling Carlotta Carlyle P.I. series. Sandra Scoppettone was able to say that she was indeed Jack Early.

In 1990 a wonderful female detective series was written and read. Scoppettone’s Lauren Laurano sluethed on the streets of New York; sometimes drank to much, occasionally had problems with monogamy and worried about issues like mercy killing; all while becoming addicted to this new world called the internet. The same year gave birth to Janet Dawson’s Jerri Howard series. Jerri is about as hard-boiled as any detective can be. Her Don’t Turn Your Back on the Ocean remains a favorite book to this day.

In ’92 Dana Stabenow introduced Femme extraordinaire, Kate Shugat, and proved to one and all that hard-boiled could move beyond mean streets and to the Alaska outback. * Val McDermid was writing in England and writing some very powerful beginnings for a career that today is spoken of by others with awe. In ‘93, before Lincoln Rhymes and Amanda, came another very powerful sleuthing duo. * Leslie Glass’s April Woo series was amongst the first to feature “profiling”’ and good old fashioned detective work done with a noir feel that at its best is the very best. I’d be remiss to not mention Patsy Cornwell. Her first three books featuring Kaye Scarpetta were engrossing reads with a whole new feel to them. After that the limitations to her writing skills became apparent to the well read mystery reader at about the same ratio as her bank account grew. So congratulations to her. She’s richer than God, selling a ton of books, destroying paintings and totally unreadable. * S.J. Rozan. What does one say about this lady. A series with two leads and told from a New York point of view, the Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series is sometimes hard-boiled and sometimes pure detecting but always the author pens her works with a skill others would kill to own.

And in the year 2000 where are the hard-boiled ladies?

While McDermid and Rozan are donning the gowns of greatness with stronger and stronger voices in every outing and Paretsky continues to give new life to a style of protagonist so often copied by others that V.I. could have become cliched by now, other ladies are stepping up to the plate and hitting them out of the park.

We have Denise Mina whose work is more hard-boiled than anyone else’s out there. Do not deny yourself this lady’s works. Mo Hayter has begun a career in mystery hard-boiled with a skill not often found. * Karin Slaughter wrote a debut novel, which is reintroducing the reading populace to southern noir. In your face and southernly, timed all at once she’s a writer to watch out for.

And once you’ve caught up with the hard-boiled sleuths and aren’t afraid of the female author anymore I know of several wonderful three minute eggs.

Lippman, * Barr, * Haddam, Spring, Hendersen, and * Hayter and the list continues.......

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