I chose these female characters for their agency. No man pushes them around. No man hems them in with their expectation of feminine behavior. And I noticed these five stories are all stand-alone novels. In most detective novels, the protagonist remains unchanged from the beginning of the investigation to the end. Sometimes the author patches in some personal crisis, but I can see the stitchery. In these following stories, thereโs a journey of self-awareness.
Tracy Waterhouse, in Kate Atkinsonโs Started Early, Took My Dog, is intelligent and a straight shooter. A shiny new cop, just off probation, Tracy and her partner, encounter a horrific scene: a young and starving child locked in an apartment with his dead mother for three weeks from the look of her. Tracy holds the boy and comforts him until the social worker comes and whisks him away.
Tracy canโt get the memory of the boy out of her head. She goes to the hospital where the child was left, but heโs been moved and no one will tell her where theyโve taken him. Tracy meets dead end after dead end until sheโs told by her superiors to leave the case alone. The kidโs memory haunts her throughout her career.
Fast forward, Tracy the big, graceless girl matures into a big graceless late middle-aged woman, retired with no close friends and no lovers. She works in shopping mall security just to pass the time. While sheโs at the mall a weeping child turns Tracyโs world on its head. What is the right thing to doโand is it legal? This book plays the edges of wrong and right and leaves it up to the reader to decide what they think.
Antoinette Conway, in The Trespasser, by Tana French, hates her new job as a homicide detective. Sheโs bombarded with pranksโsomeone pisses in her lockerโhilarious, right? Antoinette grows more paranoid by the day about her co-workers, but she toughs it out. By the time she gets her first murder, the victim is exactly the kind of girly-girl-pink-hearts woman that Antoinette despises.
Antoinette is a hard sell because weโre inside her head, which is not a happy place to be. But sheโs a talented and a tireless investigator, and she is, after all, trying to function in an all-boysโ club. Antoinetteโs investigation proves that she was wrong about many of her assumptions: about what kind of a woman the victim was, about the trustworthiness of her partner and about her boss. By the end of the story, sheโs just as tough, but I believe she wonโt be so quick to think the worst of people.
My third memorable character is Brigid OโShaughnessy, the beating heart of a murder investigation in Dashiell Hammettโs The Maltese Falcon. These days, damsel-in-distress has gone out of fashion, thank God, but there was a time when men could easily believe that women couldnโt cope without them. Enter Brigid, very young, beautiful and as tremulous as a young doe. In her brief life Brigid has honed her skills in the art of lying. And sheโs fast on her feetโin the time it takes to swallow, she can spin a complete narrative or if you donโt buy that one, sheโs got another. Everyone who loves old movies has seen John Houstonโs version of this wonderful crime story, but I object to his casting of Mary Astor as Brigid OโShaughnessy. Sheโs way too old to play the part. Part of Brigidโs allure is her youth. Sheโs the consummate femme fatale.
Daphne du Maurierโs Rebecca has a pair of villains: Rebecca and her maid and housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers. I love how this story is constructed. Rebecca is dead at the beginning of the story, and her husband Max de Winter appears to be in mourning. Heโs famous for his fabulous estate, Manderley. We learn about Rebecca when the unnamed female protagonist becomes the second Mrs. de Winter. The new Mrs. de Winter is clearly over her depth from the moment she arrives at Manderley. Her sister and brother-in-law, the estate manager, the staff, and especially Mrs. Danvers, who runs the place, comment how marvelous and competent Rebecca was, and in contrast, how inept the ungainly second Mrs. de Winter is. Max doesnโt help, heโs surly and remote. Our protagonist comes close to committing suicide at Mrs. Danvers urging, when the alarm comes up that sailors have uncovered a sunken craft believed to be Rebeccaโs boat. The climax of the story reveals what a shit Rebecca was and how much Max despised her, despite her beauty and talent. Thereโs a hearing and the haunted Max de Winter nearly cracks in two. Thatโs when the second Mrs. de Winter comes into her own power and saves him.
Best for last is Crystal Holroyd from Big Sky, by Kate Atkinson. Chrystal, a.k.a. Christina, a.k.a Tina is a statuesque blonde trophy wife living in an affluent suburb, the mother of a three-year-old and a stepmother to a young teen-aged boy whom she likes better than his father does. Her various names are from a time when Chrystal was a very young victim in a pedophile ring. Tina, as she was known then, eventually aged out. She worked her way from sex worker to nail technician. She meets her husband Tommy, has a child and lives in an amazing house.
Everything is in lovely stasis until the day she senses sheโs being followed. A few days of that and she hires a detective. A note tucked under her windshield wipers threatens Crystalโs daughter if Crystal talks galvanizes her to visit the only friend she knows from the bad old days. Crystal discovers that her life is not at all what she thought it was. But Crystal is no longer the small, defenseless victim of her abusers. Sheโs a grown-assed powerful woman, ready to defend her kids with everything she has. Justiceโitโs so deeply satisfying. Itโs why I love mysteries.
All five of these characters defied expectations, and seized their power. They were a joy to spend time with because of their complexity. Womenโs power is complex. Iโd love hearing your thoughts.
Lily Gardner grew up in Minneapolis longing to be blonde and to live in California, surfing and writing poetry. Over the years her tastes changed: California became Oregon and poetry became mysteries. She has written three novels, including two noir mysteries, A Bitch Called Hope and Betting Blind. Lily lives in Portland with her husband, two corgis, and several thousand books.
