of the detective story as we know it today have appeared in literature through the centuries, beginning with Cain murdering his brother in the Bible to the bloodletting in several of Shakespeare’s plays and advancing to the gothic novels of the eighteenth century. Credit for the invention of the classic detective story is generally given to Edgar Allan Poe for his lurid tale “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” in 1841, in which he provided the template for all writers who followed. Brilliant detective? Check. Sidekick who served as the reader’s surrogate, asking the questions that we couldn’t? Check. Seemingly impossible crime? Check. Baffled police force that relied on an amateur to solve the puzzle? Check.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the history of women detectives in literature accurately mirrored society; how could it not? Much of that history paralleled detective fiction in general, just some years behind the roles of male authors and characters.
A little more than twenty years after the debut of Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin, the first female detective character appeared, either Mrs. Paschal in the anonymously published Revelations of a Lady Detective (1864) or the eponymous protagonist of Andrew Forrester, Jr.’s The Female Detective, published the same year; exact publication dates are disputed.
While the first authors of detective fiction were men, female authors began to be published about a quarter of a century later. Generally credited with being the first woman to tell mystery stories, Anna Katharine Green was actually preceded by Metta Victoria Fuller Victor, who wrote the groundbreaking novel The Dead Letter, published in 1867, more than a decade before Green’s first novel, The Leavenworth Case (1878). Variously regarded as the “mother,” “grandmother,” or “godmother” of the detective story, Green went on to be a hugely successful author whose career spanned six different decades, her last book, The Step on the Stair, finally being published in 1923.
The appearance of both female characters and writers following their male counterpoints was not surprising due to contemporary ideas of femininity in nineteenth-century England and America (apart from some French detective fiction in the nineteenth century, there were virtually no mystery novels published in the rest of the world). Scotland Yard (a metonym for the Metropolitan Police Service) was created in 1829, but the first woman officer wasn’t appointed until 1915, a year after the creation of the Women’s Police Service. In the United States, the first police force was created in Boston in 1838, but the first woman to be hired as a “policeman” (her official title with the Chicago Police Department) did not occur until 1891.
Credit must be given to the fecund creativity of the author of Revelations of a Lady Detective, who invented an imaginary special division of female detectives, preceding the reality of the situation by more than a half century, and to Baroness Orczy, whose Lady Molly was placed in the “Female Department” of Scotland Yard—which didn’t exist.
For a woman to take a job as a policewoman or as a private detective was an act of great courage—or desperation. It was regarded as lowly work, almost as damning of a woman’s character as if she were an actress. Nonetheless, the Victorian era found quite a few women engaged in the profession in fictional form. Without exception, they were strong, independent women who didn’t fret about their reputations as they had a job to do and went about their business with dependable dedication and intelligence. While it is common for these literary figures to rely on their intuition (and occasionally their charm), they display a doggedness and a surprising degree of courage that enables them to solve mysteries.
Charging into the twentieth century, it became more common for female characters, both detectives and criminals, to engage in their respective activities more for sport and entertainment than out of necessity, and nowhere is this more in evidence than in the pulp magazines. America tried to deny alcohol to its people, but it gave women the vote, which changed a wide spectrum of attitudes and practical elements of daily life. Women’s hemlines and haircuts became shorter, they wanted to drink and smoke, just as men did, and women took as much freedom and license in the Roaring Twenties as their male counterparts. Sure, a few women in the pages of the popular magazines who were working as private detectives or reporters had positions intended to make them assistants or “girl Fridays,” but there they were, in front of the situation, usually smarter than their bosses, frequently bailing them out of difficult situations and, while often proclaiming their fear, equally as feisty and fearless as their sidekicks.
Just as that social revolution of the 1920s changed women’s roles in real life as well as in fiction, the upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s, specifically the feminist movement, also had a profound and inevitable effect on women in the world of detective fiction, both as authors and as characters.
Marcia Muller had her first book published by McKay-Washburn, a modest little company that took a chance in 1977 on Edwin of the Iron Shoes, which introduced Sharon McCone. It was the first novel that was written by a woman to feature a tough female private eye. That publishing breakthrough opened the gate, and a few others stepped through before a positive crush poured forth. The first and, in many ways, most notable authors to walk in those shoes were Sue Grafton, who brought Kinsey Millhone to readers in 1982 with the first of her worldwide bestselling alphabet series, “A” Is for Alibi, and Sara Paretsky, who, in the same year, published the first V. I. Warshawski novel, Indemnity Only, the beginning of another series that went on to become an international success.
Paretsky also was the driving force behind the creation of Sisters in Crime, an organization officially formed in 1987 with the intention of attracting more attention to women mystery writers, both in terms of reviews and sales. A look at the mystery section in bookstores and the bestseller lists is undeniable evidence that the organization has achieved its goals.
The stories in this collection span a century and a half and range from the cozy (which is not a pejorative, as some of its most popular practitioners have accused it of being) to the hard-boiled (which is difficult to define precisely but, like porn, you know it when you read it). They are the distillation of a lifetime of reading (as well as publishing, editing, and retailing) and were selected for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was historical significance. Admittedly, some of the milestones of distaff detection will require a touch more patience than more contemporary female ferrets, but they have their own charm and are worth the reader’s attention.
Seeing the evolution of the female detective’s style as it gathers strength and credibility through the decades is educational, but that is not the purpose of this book, or not the primary one, anyway. The writers whose work fills these pages are the best of their time, and their stories are among the high points of detective fiction that may be read with no greater agenda than the pure joy that derives from distinguished fiction.
—Otto Penzler