Well despite a few final temper tantrums from Winter, the Spring is here (at least on the calendar). Among other topics, it's a time, certainly, for refreshing our thinking about, and our tastes in, crime fiction. I thought it might be a good idea to visit the Classic Mysteries Vault and bring back some of the short but quite satisfying exploits of some early fictional crime-fighting pioneers. Some years ago, Michael Sims put together a fine paperback for Penguin, offering eleven short stories starring female crimefighters, written during an era where such an occupation was generally not considered "fit" for women. By way of thumbing my nose at that viewpoint, here's what I had to say about Sims's collection, The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime, when I reviewed it here eight years ago. As always, the transcript has been lightly edited:
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When a lover of classic mysteries thinks back to what we now call the Victorian Era – roughly the second half of the nineteenth century and a little beyond – what names of fictional detectives come to mind? Besides Sherlock Holmes, obviously, and a handful of others? But do you think of Dorcas Dene? Loveday Brooke? Mrs. Paschal? Amelia Butterworth? Good, Victorian detectives all of them. And you can read some of their exploits in The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime, edited by Michael Sims. Sims has pulled together a fascinating collection of stories for Penguin Classics.
He begins with the first story ever to feature a woman detective – a story called “The Mysterious Countess,” by W. S. Hayward, which was published in 1864 – and may, in fact, have appeared three years before that. It features a woman named Mrs. Paschal, who works for the police in a case involving hidden treasure, secret passages and bank robbery. It’s worth noting at this point, as Sims tells us in his introduction, that women were detectives in fiction long before they were accepted into real police departments. London police hired their first women as police officers in 1918; that would be more than 50 years after Mrs. Paschal’s fictional exploits. Yet these fictional exploits did, eventually, pave the way for women to be accepted into what – at the time – seemed like a most unladylike occupation.
In The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime, we have eleven stories about such women. Most are set in England, but there are several American stories as well. Two of these are by Anna Katherine Green, an author who was extremely popular in the early years of the 20th century.
As you might expect, the stories vary a bit in quality. One of my favorites is an 1897 story by George Sims, called “The Man with the Wild Eyes.” It features a woman detective named Dorcas Dene whose detecting style, I suspect, may remind many readers of Sherlock Holmes. She looks for physical clues, relies on logic and is quite astute at reading the personalities of the people she meets.
On the other hand, the story “The Man with Nine Lives,” by Hugh C. Weir, is somewhat less appealing (to me, anyway). The detective, Madelyn Mack, apparently is based on a real-life American detective named Mary Holland. Here, Madelyn Mack is given a fictional Watson, a reporter named Nora Noraker, who, like Madelyn Mack – as Michael Sims notes in his introductory notes to the story – "suffers from alliteration and exclamation points." The latter, to be sure, are scattered all too frequently throughout the story of an apparent murder solved by Mack. The story also features a police detective so dense that he makes Sherlock Holmes’s Inspector Lestrade look like an absolute genius. And the style is distinctly had-I-but-known…listen to this: “Neither of us knew that already the crimson trail of crime was twisting toward us – that within twelve hours we were to be pitchforked from a quiet weekend’s rest into the vortex of tragedy.” Had I but known indeed. And yet, when you get past the style, it’s really a pretty good story.
In fact, all of the stories in the book are worth reading – some, admittedly, more out of curiosity about the kind of stories featuring women detectives that were prevalent during the Victorian era, but many of then excellent stand-alone mysteries. You’ll find murder, to be sure, as well as disappearances, mysterious fortunes, robberies and thefts – all solved by intelligent, well-drawn female detectives. “The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime” is a great deal of fun, and it gives the reader a chance to meet some largely forgotten but highly interesting women detectives, many of them ahead of their times, and all of them quite good to know. The introduction to the collection by Michael Sims, and his additional notes about each author and detective, add immensely to the value of the book, both as entertainment and education.
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You can listen to the complete original review by clicking here.
Next: The Judas Window, by John Dickson Carr, writing as Carter Dickson.
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