When I was writing my feminist noir debut novel, The Lady Upstairs, I turned to other noir novels (and films!) for inspiration on crafting a character that I wanted to be both a throwback to the genre I love and also, her own creation. In The Lady Upstairs, my main character, Jo, works as a literal femme fatale: blackmailing the bad men of Los Angeles in a honeypot sting arrangement. I found inspiration for Jo in the following strong women of noir–namely, the following five femmes fatale.

  1. The unnamed narrator from Queenpin by Megan Abbott. The unnamed narrator of Megan Abbott’s Queenpin is a young woman in search of her destiny when the novel opens, and she ends the book as the toughest of cookies. Our girl learns from the best: Gloria Denton, a Virginia Hill-figure with more clout, who takes the narrator under her wing and teaches her the ropes of organized crime. Abbott flips the script and focuses on the work of the women in the underbelly of society and the results are spectacular, surprising, and as noir as it gets.
  2. Gilda. Few individual film fatales set to celluloid are more iconic than Rita Hayworth as the titular character in the film Gilda. From the hair flip entrance to the quasi-striptease performance of “Put the Blame on Mame,” Gilda is all bodily insouciance, trapped between two men and using the best weapon in her arsenal to gain a foothold between them: her sex appeal. But there’s something very human beneath Gilda’s bluster: her loneliness and yearning for connection make her more nuanced and interesting than many other femme fatales in the genre, qualities I wanted to bring to my own characters.
  3. Phyllis Nirdlinger/Dietrichson in Double Indemnity. It’s impossible to choose between the literary Nirdlinger in the novel Double Indemnity or the cinematic Dietrichson (played by Barbara Stanwyck) in the film Double Indemnity. As Nirdlinger, Phyllis is almost supernaturally evil; as Nirdlinger, Phyllis is cool, calculating, shrewd, and a lot of fun. One of my favorite bits of trivia about Double Indemnity the film is that Stanwyck’s wig was chosen precisely because it looked so artificial; costuming indicating character.
  4. Matty from Body Heat. The neo-noir film Body Heat is basically an updated, sex-heavy ‘80s version of Double Indemnity and features a femme fatale to match. Matty Walker, as played by Kathleen Turner, is confident, sexy, appealing, and very, very married when she meets Ned Racine, the stooge who’s going to fall for her. But what becomes clear later in the film is that what Matty is, more than anything else, is very, very smart–smarter than any of the men around her. You can practically feel the sizzle of irritation coming off her that she’s trapped in a man’s world, playing by their rules, when she’s smarter than all of the men in her world combined.
  5. Sherri Parlay from Miami Purity. If you haven’t read Miami Purity by Vicki Hendricks, that’s your immediate first stop after this list. Described by Kirkus Reviews as “a jolt of ‘90s female noir,” Hendricks packs as much noir philosophy of life into this novel as anything ever written by James M. Cain. Sherri’s down on her luck after killing her abusive husband, and looking for a new start free of stripping. But like the best noir protagonists, you know her desire (specifically, for a handsome fella named Payne) will lead to her downfall and you’re ready to take the ride with her anywhere.

Halley Sutton holds an MFA in Writing from Otis College of Art and Design and a Bachelor’s of Art in Creative Writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She lives in Playa del Rey and spends her free time chasing Hollywood noir trivia. THE LADY UPSTAIRS is her first novel.