By Pat Leuchtman

I used to be a snob about detective stories. Nobody with a mind would read mysteries! That changed when I was chained to a hospital bed after the birth of my third child (first daughter) because of phlebitis. I had brought books with me, but as week two drew near, I had read them all, and I was forced to read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie that had been included in an omnibus volume.

But I fell in love with Hercule Poirot, and the twist at the end hooked me on mysteries forever. Soon I was equally entranced with Miss Marple, who was not the dim old biddy she sometimes seemed.

At first I didn’t go beyond cozy mysteries set in quiet British villages, but I soon became devoted to the hard-boiled women detectives who started showing up in the 1980’s.

Recently, a mystery-reading neighbor assured me that the largest segment of mystery readers are college-educated women who are devoted to justice.

Maybe I can resurrect my claim as snob. We readers, after all, have something in common with these heroines: these days they are feeling their age. None of us are as young as we were, but they persevere.

Sue Grafton  was my first find, with her first Kinsey Milhone mystery A is for Alibi published in 1983. She has moved through the alphabet and her most recent is T is for Trespass.

Kinsey lives in a tiny apartment in Santa Teresa; her landlord is the octogenarian Henry Pitts, with whom she has an affectionate relationship. Henry has even been known to accompany her on her outings. In this latest adventure, insurance fraud and concern about an elderly neighbor move from an investigation of elder abuse, to identity theft and murder.

The story rapidly shifts from everyday problems to psychological and physical danger as Kinsey becomes involved with Solana Rojas, ostensibly a nurse who works with the elderly. This is not the first time that social issues have provided a frame for Kinsey’s adventures.

Kinsey gives a kind of précis of her character at the end of the book. “To the cynics among us, I must sound like an idiot, but I do hold to the good... There will always be someone poised to take advantage of the vulnerable: the young, the old, the innocent of any age. Though I know this from long experience, I refuse to feel discouraged. In my own unassuming way I know I can make a difference.”

Of course, I am law abiding myself, but what appeals to me is Kinsey’s risk-taking, occasional forays into breaking and entering, and skill in plausible lying. She is sometimes terrified (tarantulas!)  but always brave. She acknowledges that in her forties she is still strong, but takes longer to recover. No matter, in spite of pain and in the face of threat her brain never stops working, and she never provokes an adversary without having a plan in mind.

Well, hardly ever.
   
Sara Paretsky
If there is one hardboiled female PI around, surely others will follow. It is amazing how new ideas and characters seem to be floating around in the ether and take form all at the same time. (How else can we explain that Isabella has taken over for Jennifer as one of the most popular girls’ names?) Sara Paretsky wanted to read about a woman who could solve her own problems, and so, Victoria Iphegania Warshawski was born.

VI Or Vic (she hates it when people call her Vicky and few people know about Iphegenia), describes herself as someone who always loved action. She has been accused of tilting at windmills and running around like a "damned Amazon," but she always goes her own way.

Once, when she was asked what keeps her going – and she has gone on through 13 books now — VI said, “Idealism and naïveté. And curiosity about what happens next.” That’s pretty much what keeps us readers coming back. At least the idealism and curiosity part.    

Like Kinsey, VI feels that age has taken its toll on her strength, but resists that knowledge. Dr. Lotty Henschel, the older, wiser doctor who runs a free clinic, has even suggested that VI puts herself in danger’s way because, at age 46, she feels guilty for living longer than her beloved mother, who died when she was 44.

In Fire Sale, VI takes on a group of high school girls as their basketball coach in her old South Chicago neighborhood.

Naturally, she becomes involved with their families and a world that is filled with worry about keeping a poorly paid job, keeping a family fed, and keeping those tough girls safe. She investigates the rich and powerful Bysen family. This time her aged but feisty landlord Mr. Contreras, and the two dogs they share, take a more active part in the action, searching the dangerous streets of South Chicago for the victims of a kidnapping. There’s action enough even for VI.

Nevada Barr
There are lots of reasons to enjoy a series besides an attractive and appealing hero. One is the setting. While VI’s Chicago and its denizens plays a stable part in Paretsky’s books, Nevada Barr’s detective roams over all our great land.

Nevada Barr put in years as a park ranger herself and then put her creation, ranger and law enforcement officer, Anna Pigeon, to work in a sampling of our national parks, from Mesa Verde in Colorado to Liberty Island, the home of the Statue of Liberty.

She survived forest fires (Firestorm), naturalists (Endangered Species) and spelunking (Blind Descent). I actually couldn’t finish Blind Descent because Anna’s (and my) claustrophic terror of those deep caves was too much for me.

In Winter Study, Anna returns to Lake Superior and Isle Royale (that provided the setting for A Superior Death in 1994), where there really is a January study of wolves and moose that has gone on for 50 years.

She is older and feels the cold more acutely than she did 20 years earlier. One of Barr’s strengths is the way she makes the physical challenges of her setting a palpable character in the story. This time, it is the unrelenting cold, and soon the mysterious signs of a giant wolf. The stress of the cold, tales of the monstrous windigo, and the strained relations between the researchers – and murder - soon make Anna unsure of who can be counted on and who is a danger to her personally.

Part of my fascination with these "bad girls" is their determination. Even when it seems there is no hope for physical survival, even when they are deliciously tempted to just give in to death and oblivion, in fire or a frigid lake, they persevere and triumph.

They are heroes.

They may creak and feel their age, but their idealism is intact. 

They are undaunted.

Jacqueline Winspeare
As much as I love the modern, tough ladies, I must confess that I retain my affection for the British landscape in a time gone by. I would not describe the world of fictional characters Maisie Dobbs or Mary Russell as cozy. There is deeper characterization than in Agatha Christie’s mysteries, and a reflection of a different set of social problems than those affecting my modern heroes.

Jacqueline Winspeare’s Maisie Dobbs is a different kind of detective, who opens her office in London in 1929 with the help of her former employer (as a 13-year-old she was sent to work as a tweeny maid), friend and patron Lady Rowan. Lady Rowan suggests Discreet Cerebral Investigations as a name for the business, indicating that the processes and goals of Maisie’s investigations are not as clear-cut as finding out whodunit.

With Lady Rowan’s help, she attended college at Cambridge, then served as a nurse at the Front during World War I and met the man she planned to marry. She also studied with the mysterious Maurice Blanche, whose views and techniques would always influence Maisie.

Referring to one case, Maurice said, “There was something there for me to discover about myself, not simply the task of solving a case...What is there here for you? ...What is there in your heart that needs to be given light and understanding?”

In each book, the shadow of World War I falls across the lives of the characters. Maisie Dobbs, published in 2003, tells of her first assignment, a case of infidelity, that led in unexpected directions and back to the war.

An Incomplete Revenge, the fifth in the series, takes her from London to a village in Kent during the hop-picking season. There are gypsies, unexplained fires, and a cursed plot of land, but again Maisie must look back to the suffering caused by The Great War to find a solution. And some measure of consolation.
      
Laurie R. King  
You don’t have to be a mystery reader to be familiar with Sherlock Holmes. But you may not know that when he retired to the Sussex Downs at the age of 54 to tend bees he met the 15-year-old Anglo-American orphan Mary Russell and began to instruct her in the skills of deduction. Of course, he did not immediately detect her sex, dressed as she was in knickers and a cap, but we’ll give the Great Detective a pass. This once.

The Mary Russell novels by Laurie R. King, begin with The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, which tells a bit of Mary’s backstory, but concentrates on her lessons with Holmes. At one point, even these elementary lessons stir things up, and Holmes’ brother Mycroft sends the two off to Jerusalem to do a bit of spying while things cool off. The Great War plays a part here as well. It should be noted that it is Mary, disguised as a young boy, who takes a bullet, not Holmes.

As a librarian I always suggested to my patrons that they read The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, O Jerusalem and Justice Hall, in that order. The O Jerusalem adventure is really an interpolation into the first book, and the characters they meet in Jerusalem appear in very different circumstances in Justice Hall some years later.

Mary’s parents and younger brother died in an automobile accident in San Francisco not long after the great earthquake in 1906. In the eighth book of the series, Locked Rooms, Holmes helps unlock the mysteries surrounding that time in Mary’s life, which she can hardly remember, although she still carries the burden of a childish guilt.

Holmes is shown in the unaccustomed role of doting and worried husband. “It is a singularly disconcerting experience to discover a supremely competent individual brought to her knees; even more so when the person is one’s wife.”

There is great pleasure in an ongoing series. The characters’ histories and complex personalities are revealed over a period of years. These women, Kinsey, VI, Anna, Maisie and Mary, are all intelligent and independent with great physical and mental stamina. Their ideals and curiosity are intact.

The modern  Americans have a wise ass style, and acknowledge that their bad girl impulses sometimes make them very like the criminals they are chasing.

The Brits come to us from a very different age and world with different impulses, but manage to deeply engage the modern reader, not only in the finely drawn characters, but in the portrait of an England that is radically changed when a whole generation of young men is wiped out. They are not as quite as old as the Americans in their latest adventures, but there is great pleasure in seeing how they got to that place in their life.

The original hard-boiled detectives of Mickey Spillane and Dashiell Hammett were loners, fighting the good fight from an isolated position, but even the hard-boiled and independent Kinsey, Anna and VI have close emotional relationships with family, neighbors and friends – although long term romances are in short supply. 

I’m always eager for the next installment to see where their ideals and hearts will take them.

As a postscript, I should add that all of these writers and novels have won countless awards from various organizations. My snobbery is showing again.
 
Pat Leuchtman is a reader, a retired librarian and a gardener. Visit her website www.commonweeder.com