Susan
Wittig Albert
China Bayles left her legal career as a defense attorney to become
a Texas herb-shop proprieter and sometimes sleuth in Susan Wittig
Albert's mystery series.
Nevada Barr
Nevada Barr takes us along on captivating adventures with park
ranger Anna Pigeon (an independent person and congenial feminist),
who is invariably found helping to solve mysterious deaths in
the natural settings of national parks.
Eleanor Taylor Bland
Eleanor Taylor Bland's sleuth is Marti MacAlister, an African
American woman homicide detective in Illinois.
Rita
Mae Brown
Rita Mae Brown's best-selling mystery series features feline
sleuth, Mrs. Murphy. Brown is also the author of numerous other
feminist novels as well as volumes of poetry and a writer's manual.
Dorothy Cannell
Ellie Simons, an interior decorator who after solving a mystery
and losing weight inherits a mansion, in rural England is the
protagonist in most of Dorothy Cannell's delightful and funny
British mysteries, beginning with The Thin Woman.
Sarah Caudwell
The Hilary Tamar series by Sarah Caudwell features an androgynous
Oxford professor protagonist, five London barristers, incredible
wit, and ingenious plotting.
Amanda Cross
Professor Carolyn Heilbrun, who has written mysteries as Amanda
Cross since 1964, paved the way for women mystery authors and
female characters with her popular series based on feminist English
Professor Kate Fansler.
Sandra
de Helen
Shirley Combs and her sidekick Dr. Mary Watson
are the feminist protagonists of de Helen's The Hounding
(and planned series) with ties to the tradition of Sherlock
Holmes. Combs and Watson solve mysteries much as their predecessors
did, using logic and facts to arrive at a conclusion.
Susan Dunlap
Susan Dunlap writes three mystery series with engaging female
protagonists: a Berkely police detective, a forensic pathologist,
and a meter reader. Jill Smith is Dunlap's Berkeley, California
homicide detective who contends with both the eccentricities of
that community and sexism on the police force. Kiernan O'Shaughnessy
is a private detective and former medical examiner in La Jolla,
California. Vejay Haskell is a utility meter reader, who left
her career as an account executive.
Nicola
Furlong
Nicola Furlong's mysteries feature a woman professional golfer
and part-time coroner, Riley Quinn.
Charlotte
Perkins Gilman
Activist and author of such feminist classics such as The
Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the late 1920s
wrote a mystery, Unpunished. This mystery, not published
until 1997, features a husband-wife detective team and women's
rights themes.
Ellen
Godfrey
Ellen Godfrey's tough and feisty Jane Tregar has battled her
way up the corporate ladder to a senior position in an executive
search firm. She needs all her high-tech know-how and corporate
savvy to survive, prosper, and solve murders in the male-dominated
business world.
Sue Grafton
One of the best known women mystery authors, Sue Grafton began
her best-selling series with "A" Is For Alibi and continues
through the alphabet with her gutsy heroine, private eye Kinsey
Malone.
Terris McMahan Grimes
Theresa Galloway, a professional married woman with two children
and an elderly mother, is the protagonist of Terris McMahan Grimes'
mystery series.
Carolyn
Hart
Bookstore owner Annie Laurance Darling is Carolyn Hart's sleuth
in her renowned South Carolina-based Death on Demand series. Hart's
second series features southern journalist Henrietta "Henrie O"
O'Dwyer Collins.
Ellen
Hart
Ellen Hart's award-winning Jane Lawless series, which is set
in Minneapolis, features a lesbian restraunt owner and her college
friend Cordelia Thorn. Sophia Greenway, a food critic, is the
protagonist in Hart's second series.
Sparkle Hayter
A television reporter is the sleuth Sparkle Hayter's very funny
and feminist Robin Hudson mystery series, which includes intriguing
titles such as Revenge of the Cootie Girls.
Sue Henry
Based in the Alaska wilds, Sue Henry's series which began with
Murder on the Iditarod Trail features state trooper Alex
Jensen and women mushers.
Joan Hess
Joan Hess writes two brilliantly funny series set in Arkansas.
One series centers around bookstore owner and part-time sleuth
Claire Malloy and her rebellious daughter, Caron. The Maggody
series features Police Chief Arly Hanks who contends with
murder and mayhem in Maggody, Arkansas (pop. 755) involving eccentric
townfolks and a never-ending array of visitors from militia groups,
to faith healers, to UFO enthusiasts. Both series feature wonderful
social satire and feminist humor.
Karen Kijewski
Kat Colorado is Karen Kijewski's hard-boiled private eye who
is a former bartender. The Kat Colorado series is based in Sacramento.
Laurie King
Laurie King has added feminism to Sherlock Holmes in her Mary
Russell series. King's series is based on Mary Russell, a young
woman who begins the series as Holmes' apprentice and later marries
the world's most famous sleuth. San Francisco police investigator
Kate Martinelli, a lesbian, is the focus of King's other award-winning
series.
Virginia
Lanier
Jo Beth Siddon defines herself as a feminist in the first pages
of Virginia Lanier's mystery and suspense series. Lanier's protagonist
takes on sexism with Thelma and Louise like zeal in this wonderfully
written series about a Georgia woman who runs a bloodhound tracking
business.
Margaret
Maron
Margaret Maron's award-winning series featuring Judge Deborah
Knott is set in North Carolina. Her Sigrid Harald mysteries are
about a New York cop.
Lia Matera
Attorneys Willa Jansson and Laura DiPalma are the respective
protagonists in Lia Matera's two San Francisco-based series. Beginning
with the murder of her law review colleagues, Willa Jannson, whose
parents are leftist activists, solves mysteries with considerable
humor and sarcasm. The Laura DiPalma series about a career-focused
defense attorney is also written with humor.
Sharyn
McCrumb
Sharyn McCrumb writes two series, the Elizabeth McPherson mysteries
and the Ballad novels. McCrumb's Elizabeth McPherson character
is a delightful young forensic anthropologist -- the series sees
her through her undergraduate and graduate degrees and post-ph.D.
work -- who becomes involved in murder cases and provides a comic
view Southern aristocracy. The series now also features McPherson's
brother's feminist law partner, A.P. Hill. The Ballad series are
based on Appalachian folklore, often involving crimes of the past
as well as the present, and revolve around Nora Bonesteel, a seer.
Val McDermid
British author Val McDermid writes two mystery series, one featuring
lesbian feminist journalist Lindsay Gordon and a second with private
eye Kate Brannigan as the sleuth.
Annette
Meyers
Lesley Wetzon and Xenia Smith are Wall Street head hunters who
become embroiled in murders and financial intrigue in Annette
Meyers' mystery series. A former Wall Street headhunter herself,
Meyers brings to life sexism and power struggles in the world
of high finance. With her husband, Martin, Annette Meyers co-authors,
under the name Maan Meyers, a historical series based in pre-20th
Century New York City that includes appearances by feminist legends
such as social reformer Lillian Wald and actress Lillian Russell.
Miriam
Grace Monfredo
Miriam Grace Monfredo's mysteries feature Glynnis Tyron, a librarian,
in nineteenth century Seneca Falls, New York. Seneca Falls is
the cradle of the feminist movement, and events in feminist and
abolistionist history such as the famed 1948 women's rights convention
and the underground railroad are the backdrop for the Tyron mystery
series.
Marcia Muller
Marcia Muller pioneered the now formidable genre of mysteries
featuring female sleuths with her long-standing Sharon McCone
series. Private eye Sharon McCone works for the San Francisco
legal cooperative, All Souls.
Barbara
Neely
Economic justice activist and author Barbara Neely writes a mystery
series featuring Blanche White, an Afro-American domestic worker.
Abigail Padgett
Abigail Padgett's Bo Bradley mysteries feature an acerbic and
savvy sleuth who tracks bad guys quite successfully while coping
with manic depressive illness. A second series introduced by the
wildly feminist mystery, BLUE, launches sleuth Blue McCarron,
a lesbian social psychologist who lives alone in a half-built
desert motel with her Doberman, Bronte.
Paretsky,
Sara
Sara Paretsky is one of the best known women mystery authors,
whose private detective V.I. Warshawski and gritty Chicago-based
mysteries, broke ground for women in the previously all male hard-boiled
mystery genre.
Sandra
Scoppettone
Set in New York's Greenwich Village, Sandra Scoppettone's Lauren
Laurano mysteries feature a lesbian, computer saavy former FBI
agent and now private detective. The Lauren Laurano series is
both riveting and entertaining, as Laurano contends with tragedies
of her own past, mysteries at hand, and her evolving relationship
with her lover, Kip. In addition to the Lauren Laurano series,
Scoppettone has published eleven other novels, many of which have
powerful feminist themes.
Lisa Scottoline
Lisa Scottoline writes legal thrillers, which draw on her experiences
as a trial lawyer as well as her judicial clerkships in the state
and federal justice systems. Very funny and fast-paced, Scottoline's
novels are set in Philadelphia and feature women attorneys.
Janice Steinberg
As a reporter for the NPR affiliate in San Diego, Margo Simon's
beat includes everything from cutting edge artists to injustices
at U.S.-owned factories in Tijuana. Very much a woman of the 90's,
Margo juggles work, marriage, and two adolescent stepchildren.
Marilyn Wallace
Marilyn Wallace has written critically acclaimed psychological
suspense novels and mysteries featuring homicide detectives. A
feminist favorite is Primary Target, which features Congresswoman
Jean Talbot, a presidential candidate whose campaign is underseige
by the misogynist group, Brotherhood of Men. Wallace also has
edited the five volume Sisters in Crime series.
Valerie Wilson Wesley
Valerie Wilson Wesley's sleuth Tamara Hayle is a tough, single
parent Newark cop turned P.I.
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