WOMEN OF MYSTERY

I’m Linda Semple and, for the last half a century I’ve been collecting, reading, and analysing books by Women Mystery Writers.

In 1989, Rosalind Coward and I wrote an essay for Helen Carr’s book ‘From My Guy to Sci-fi: Genre and Women’s Writing in the Postmodern World’. Titled ‘Tracking Down the Past: Women and Detective Fiction’, it started thus:

‘Until very recently, all the critical writing about Thrillers – an all-purpose generic term which includes mysteries, detective fictions and spy stories – would lead you to believe that the vast majority of important work in this area was produced by men.’

Over 30 years have passed and, with a few notable and mainly academic exceptions, very little has changed. A recent history of the genre, described as ‘forensically sharp and exhaustively informed’, a ‘definitive and compelling history of the genre’, and ‘the first major history of crime fiction in fifty years’ that runs to over 700 pages focuses 10 pages on Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, Josephine Tey, Margery Allingham and the other ‘Golden Age’ women writers; it gives 6 pages to ‘Feminist’ writers, including Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton; 6 pages each to Ruth Rendell and PD James; there are two chapters covering the ‘Woman in Peril’ and ‘Domestic’ sub-genres, both of which are primarily written by women and both of which are, in this book, belittled; finally, there are more pages dedicated to John Buchan than to almost all the women writers covered.

I should however, thank the author of ‘The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators’, because also over thirty years ago I had been commissioned to write a history of women crime writers; it was to be called ‘A Suitable Job for a Woman’ and was to sit alongside the Pandora Women Crime Writers imprint that Ros Coward and I co-edited, that reprinted ‘forgotten’ books in the genre as well as introducing new voices. For a number of personal reasons, it never happened and, over the years, various people have tried (and failed!) to get me to complete it. But Martin Edwards’ book has made me realise that there is still – at least in terms of mainstream publishing – a failure both of knowledge and understanding of the enormous contribution women have contributed and are still contributing to this most popular of genres.

The beauty of modern technology means I can deliver the original themes and content of that lost book – which, incidentally, appears in a couple of bibliographies of those academic books I mentioned above; a little mystery in itself – in the form of a website that I can also update and add to as and when I wish. It also allows me to confess that I am not as current in my reading of women crime writers as I ought to be; with a few notable exceptions I have found many modern novels to be formulaic, tired and, frankly, not worth the time I could have spent re-reading ‘The Tiger in the Smoke’. However, with a website, if I do find anyone that bucks that trend for me (I’m looking at you Robert Galbraith/JK Rowling) I can add them to the list.

I hope you will enjoy travelling with me as I revisit some of the wonderful foremothers of this great genre; as I tease out some of the thematic elements that underpin their craft; and as I give a wholly biased and personal view of the women who have shaped and continue to shape the mystery novel in all its diverse forms. I should also like to thank Ros for her generous agreement to allow me to reuse and draw on our article; I think it stands up pretty well, 30 years on…