Her voice amid lurking danger: Reflections on some feminist crime novels

It goes without saying that not all of the female crime novelists come out as feminists, and that some male writers can do feminist crime novels quite well.

In contrast with other genres in literature, in crime fiction, which mainly started in the mid-19th century, women writers (and even women sleuths) became active around the same time as male writers and sleuths in their stories. By some accounts around the middle of 1860s, both the first modern detective novels (by female as well as male writers in US, UK and France) and the first professional female detectives in them (one Mrs G —  in one case, Mrs Paschal in another, both working for the British police) appeared. Most of us, of course, are more familiar with characters in