Well, until recently, very few attempted it. But, back in the
bad old days,
as well as Leigh Brackett, off the top of my head,there's
Patrica
Highsmith, Delores Hitchens, Helen Nielsen, Dorothy Hughes
and Craig Rice
(admittedly in a lighter, hardboiled/screwball vein, much
like Jonathan
Latimer).
My fav is Hitchens, who wrote numerous so-so traditional
mystery novels,
but peaked with her definitely hardboiled books about
California P.I. Jim
Sader, Sleep With Strangers and Sleep With Slander, which
Bill Pronzini
tagged as "the best private eye novel written by a woman-and
one of the
best written by anybody."
Maybe now's the time to point out that very few writers, of
any gender, are
able to add high quality work to any genre. Imagine all the
idealogical
backtracking from both sides of the fence that would be going
on if it was
suddenly revealed that Raymond Chandler was a woman, or, say,
Sara Paretsky
was a man?
By the way, the list is really buzzing these days. Maybe we
could remember
not to keep quoting entire letters in our responses. Cut and
paste, guys,
cut and paste...a snip a day keeps bandwidth gridlock
away...
Oh, and Peter (from the U.K.), a dickless dick is a female
detective. Dick
is North American slang for a penis, as well as a detective
(after Dick
Tracy). And, to add to the fun, I think the phrase was
brought into the
discussion by a real Dick (as in Richard). It's sometimes
also used as an
insult. Sorta like calling them an arsehole...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kevin Smith
The Thrilling Detective Web Site
http://www.colba.net/~kvnsmith/thrillingdetective/
No Business For a Lady? Women detectives in this month's P.I.
Poll!
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