Why does the Pacific Northwest seem to produce so many female mystery authors?
It’s a mystery to Pepper Parker, who works at Vancouver’s last independent bookstore, Vintage Books. Parker just knows that crime writing sells like hotcakes at Vintage, that the bookstore has gladly pitched in with many special author readings and meet-and-greets — and that a preponderance of those mystery makers do seem to be ladies.
“Yes, it seems we have more local women mystery writers than men,” she said. “It does seem that the Pacific Northwest produces a lot of them.”
You’ll be able to hear a group of them discuss their craft from 2 to 4 p.m. March 13 at Clark Public Utilities, 1200 Fort Vancouver Way. Specifically, they’ll discuss their wickedest inspirations and creations in a talk called “Learning to Love Your Bad Guy: How to Create a Villain Worthy of Your Hero or Heroine.” That’s aimed at fellow writers, obviously, but it should be fun for anyone who admires a really good bad guy. (Or girl.)
The event is free and open to everyone — even the one male mystery writer, Doc Macomber, among the 10 who’ll be there. The other nine are Heather Ames, Dorothy Black Crow, Carola Dunn, Mollie Hunt, Jill Kelly, Judy Nedry, Angela Sanders, Lauren Sweet and Lisa Alber. Their books will be for sale at the event via Vintage.
Unfortunately, not one of those writers is from Clark County. We happen to know that plenty of mystery writers — like Carolyn J. Rose, Sheila Simonson and Kate Dyer-Seeley, to name just three — live up here among us. But these are the ones who answered the call from event sponsors the American Association of University Women Vancouver and the Sisters in Crime authors’ association, we’re told. We suppose it’s no crime.
Panel moderator and author Arlene Sachitano said she’s recently been absorbing the panelists’ books: “We have a diverse group that includes cozy, fantasy, historic, regional, Native American, and international mysteries as well as several thrillers. I think it’s going to be an interesting event.”
Hardboiled vs. cozy
According to author Angela Sanders, the open secret about this ongoing explosion of women crime writers — and readers — is that it’s actually nothing new.
“Women have always been voracious readers, and women — lots of them — have been writing crime novels since the 1920s,” said Sanders. “There were scores of them, and they were writing stark, noir stories as well as gentler stories. It was a good way for a woman to pick up some cash.” For the most part, she added, you’d “never know they were women” based solely on their writing.
Most have never been known at all, added author Lisa Alber. “Female crime writers are notoriously underrepresented when it comes to reviews and recognition,” she wrote in an email. “Female crime writers write in all mystery/thriller/suspense subgenres, including noir and hardboiled. But we often don’t get the proper recognition.”
On the other hand, there’s a more genteel strain of mystery that’s considered female-friendly, and always has been. Violence takes place almost entirely offstage, and there’s usually an emphasis on a female protagonist — not a cop or detective but an unlikely amateur — in a charming, rustic setting. These are called “cozy” mysteries, and they’re a natural extension of the restrained, cerebral whodunits that Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers were writing nearly a century ago, Sanders said.
(More recently, “Murder, She Wrote” is a good example of a cozy-style mystery aimed at the small screen. Today’s “coziest” popular mystery is probably found on public television: “Doc Martin” has the quaint seaside village, plenty of cutesy comedy and zero grit. If anything keeps “Doc Martin” from true coziness, it’s the gruff male protagonist who solves medical mysteries, not murders.)
Writers and readers
Author Carola Dunn believes the recent proliferation of women mystery writers is part of a proliferation of women writers in general — facilitated by the rise of self-publishing, she said.
Did You Know?
• Trashy stories of crime and horror were known as “penny dreadfuls” when published in England in the early 19th century. But the first fiction to be considered a real detective story was “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by American literary master Edgar Allan Poe. It appeared in Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine in 1841 and introduced the figure of the brilliant sleuth who deduces his way to the solution — and then explains his reasoning to his amazed admirers.
• More than 20 years later, in 1864, two daring books were published in England: “The Female Detective” and “Revelations of a Lady Detective.” They both feature strong, smart, adventurous female sleuths — and they were both written by men.
• Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, now considered the quintessentially brilliant deducing detective, didn’t appear until 1887.
Are there actually more women than men mystery writers nowadays? It’s not possible to say. But industry statistics leave no doubt that women are by far the main readers of all fiction categories, Alber said. (She likes to quote the author Ian McEwan, who said: “When women stop reading, the novel will be dead.”)
“I don’t think there’s one answer for why,” she said. “I’ve read psychological theories such as women having more natural empathy so can get into fiction more, or that as children girls are more likely to be able to sit still for longer periods of time than boys. But who knows?”
What Alber does know is what got her into writing crime fiction: “It’s a great way to explore the human condition. There’s nothing like a crime to increase conflict and tension, and characters at odds and in trouble make for great storytelling. Most crime fiction I read is about so much more than just solving the puzzle; it’s about the characters.”
