Re Brian's comments on female protagonists in HB crime
fiction:
> . . .when I read about women PIs,
> cops, what have you, in
> fiction, something about it doesn't ring true and
I
> tune out. I'm just
> curious if anyone else finds this true as
well.
I have not trouble buying female cops in a police procedural,
because there have been women in police work since the 19th
century, and the police procedural is (or should be) an
accurate portrayal of the law enforcement profession, not a
male fantasy version of what law enforcement is like. The
tradition of depicting female cops in police fiction goes all
the way back to the very first radio episode of *Dragnet* in
which Sgt. Friday is temporarily teamed up with an undercover
policemwoman. Years later he'd do the same thing in the 1954
feature-length *Dragnet* movie.
However, with some exceptions, I have a similar reaction to
women PIs in private eye novels. Most PI stories, in contrast
to police procedurals which are defined by their technical
accuracy, are not trying to show what it's like to be a PI in
real life
(exceptions like Joe Gores notwithstanding). They're
presenting a fantasy picture of what we (some of us, anyway)
would like the PI figure to be. In Chandler's words "the hero
. . . everything."
Moreover, the fantasy is, it seems to me, a specifically male
one. Consequently, characters like Kinsey Milhone or Delilah
West tend to strike dissonant notes with me. They strike me,
to some degree, as "poachers" in male territory. I like the
Milhone and West series quite a bit, so I don't really have
any trouble getting past this initial reaction, but the
initial reaction is certainly there.
With VI Warshawski I can't get past this prejudice, however.
She strikes me as little more than Mike Hammer with tits and
a shrill, offensive left-wing agenda.
Giselle Marc, the female operative of Joe Gores's DKA series,
is one character for whom I don't have this initial "female
invader" reaction. But Gores has never been serving up the PI
fantasy. He's been applying the police procedural's technical
verity to stories about private detectives rather than police
detectives. Indeed, Gores himself refers to the DKA series as
"procedurals" rather than as "private eye novels." And since,
in real life, there are female private detectives, it seems
entirely appropriate for Gores to include one in the type of
story he's writing.
JIM DOHERTY
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