COLETTE'S LIST

Brief Reviews Writ Loud
by Colette Bancroft

A Monstrous Regiment of Women

LONG GONE ARE THE DAYS when hard-boiled mysteries were the province of male writers only. True, the form began in an intensely male ecology, in the testosterone-washed world of Hammett and Chandler, Spillane and Cain, a world where women tended to be either dithering victims or oversexed predators (or, in Spillane's case, guys in drag -- he really didn't want to let the ladies in on the fun).
Now, in hundreds of mystery novels, women detectives -- and women writers -- run the show. In fact, some of the best mystery writers today are women, and many of their characters are as adept with a wisecrack and a gun as the original tough guys -- though they tend to solve their cases mainly with brainwork, not brawn.
This month, Colette's List offers a few choice examples.

A Monstrous Regiment of Women
by Laurie R. King (1995)
In her three Mary Russell novels, of which this is the second, King takes on the Big Daddy of all detectives, hard-boiled and otherwise: the incomparable Sherlock Holmes. Mary Russell is a brilliant, quirky, iconoclastic (sound like anyone we know?) 15-year-old orphan when she first meets Holmes in The Beekeeper's Apprentice.The Great Detective is, as he has been so many times before, retired from investigation. But he soon becomes a mentor to Russell and, in A Monstrous Regiment, something more.
The novel opens in London in 1921, as Russell takes a holiday from her pursuit of a theological degree at Oxford and awaits her 21st birthday, which will free her from the guardianship of a tyrannical aunt and bring her a huge inheritance. Her version of holiday is to dress as a young man and prowl around London's meanish streets, "striking up inappropriate friendships," as Holmes puts it.
She also comes across a more socially appropriate friend from college, Lady Veronica Beaconsfield, who is doing charity work and struggling with her relationship to a former fiancé whose traumatic experiences in the Great War have left him a drug addict. Veronica finds solace, though, in the New Temple of God. Its services, Russell finds when Veronica enthusiastically drags her to one, are an exhilarating mix of evangelical Christianity and feminism, delivered by the charismatic, mysterious Margery Childe.
Despite her reservations (and her own radical biblical scholarship, which has made her more than skeptical about traditional religion), Russell is fascinated with Childe. That fascination turns serious when several of Veronica's bluestocking friends suffer fatal accidents -- not long after they alter their wills to leave substantial estates to the New Temple of God.
Russell and Holmes are soon on the case, which twists nicely. But what's really exceptional about this book is King's development of Holmes, whose previous character she understands, respects and expands ingeniously; and Russell, an intelligent but not always wise young woman who is quite Holmes' match. What King has got onto here and used very skillfully is the fact that, for many female readers (myself included), Holmes has always been a damn sexy character. I know that's shocking to armies of Holmes purists, but for some women there is nothing more erotic than a great big brain. The unorthodox romance between Holmes and Russell that runs through this book is far more satisfying than any bodice-ripper.

L is for Lawless by Sue Grafton (1995)
Maintaining a series character is a tough challenge; keeping one interesting through 13 novels is almost impossible. Sue Grafton has had a few rough patches with Kinsey Millhone -- for a couple of letters there, I found Kinsey's trademark irascibility had degenerated into downright querulousness, and the plots, long modeled on Ross MacDonald's family dramas, too often concerned people I just didn't care about. But Grafton seems to have gotten over it.
With this installment, the twelfth in the Millhone alphabet, she and Kinsey are back in form. In the best tough-detective tradition, Kinsey gets into this case by doing a favor for a friend.
This time it's her beloved landlord, Henry Pitts. In the midst of preparations for his brother William's wedding to Kinsey's buddy Rosie the Hungarian restaurateur, Henry asks her to do a little pro bono investigating. It seems a neighbor, Johnny Lee, has died. When his grandson Bucky tried to arrange a military burial for Johnny, who had been a World War II fighter pilot, he hit a snag -- the military has no record of Johnny Lee. Kinsey thinks it's going to be a matter of shuffling a few papers.She ought to know better by now; we all do.
While conducting a desultory search of Johnny's apartment, Kinsey meets his old pal Ray Rawson, an aw-shucks Southerner who seems harmless enough unless you think about his big biceps and watchful air. Turns out he's not just Johnny's old pal. In a pursuit that takes Kinsey first to Dallas and then to Louisville, she uncovers a long-ago bank robbery and the truth about Johnny's past, as well as Ray's. She also gets to know Ray's long-lost daughter, Laura Huckaby, whose motives are as difficult to read as Ray's, and Helen, Ray's redoubtable mother, a hometown fan of the Louisville Slugger.
Grafton is more playful here with Kinsey's character, and also lets her do some real in-the-trenches investigating -- when Kinsey steals a hotel maid's uniform and uses it as a disguise to search rooms, Grafton does a nice job of conveying both the mundane hard work and the rush of excitement in Kinsey's profession. The case's conclusion, too, is realistically ambiguous, and Kinsey manages to get back to Santa Teresa in time to serve as a muumuu-clad bridesmaid for William and Rosie.

Tunnel Vision by Sara Paretsky (1994)
To continue the comparison of the original tough guys writers and our regiment of women, Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky have been the Hammett and Chandler of women crime writers. Not that I'd rank them with Hammett and Chandler as writers -- I would argue that both men, especially Chandler, rank among the great American writers of this century -- but in the sense that Grafton and Paretsky have been, and remain, leaders and shapers of crime writing by women in the hard-boiled genre.
Just as Chandler used his Los Angeles setting as an integral element in the Marlowe novels, Paretsky employs Chicago as a setting that is rich both realistically and symbolically.
And her series character, V.I. Warshawski, like Marlowe, is a cynical, idealistic loner, chronically broke, always on the side of the little guy against the corrupt, who are usually the rich -- Paretsky's sense of America's class divisions is as acute as Chandler's.
Paretsky, like Grafton, has occasionally bobbled in her series. A few of the novels get bogged down in Paretsky's meticulous details, and Warshawski can be even more unrelentingly aggravating than Millhone.
But when Paretsky is good, she's very, very good. Those carefully researched details coalesce into a slice of the gritty, glorious Chicago Warshawski lives in. And V.I.'s passion and doggedness can be convincing, too.
Both those things happen in Tunnel Vision. V.I.'s stubborn nature gets her into the case when she persists in using her Loop office even though the building, scheduled to be razed, has almost no services. When she's down in the basement one day intrepidly wielding a wrench herself, she discovers a homeless woman and her three kids. The mother is clearly disturbed, all of them are ragged and hungry, but they vanish into the bowels of the city's vast underground system before V.I. can rescue them.
Rescuing women and children is, of course, a big part of V.I.'s lifework. She's on the board of a shelter for domestic abuse victims, a position that links her to Deirdre Messenger, a volunteer and the wife of Fabian Messenger. Fabian is one of V.I.'s old law school peers, now a high-powered attorney and political force.
Warshawski is mildly annoyed with Deirdre, as she is with most people. She's appalled when, as a guest at the Messengers' home, she witnesses a nasty argument among Deirdre, Fabian and their teenage daughter Emily. But things get a lot worse when she comes to her office late one night and finds Deirdre sprawled on her desk, beaten to death.
Paretsky is soon weaving a complex plot involving Deirdre's murder, lost computer files, illegal immigrant labor, child abuse, graft, runaways and, just to top it off, Chicago's underground flood.
V.I.'s single-minded pursuit of her case becomes an issue here. Both her beloved mentor Lotty and her lover, police detective Conrad Rawlings, are seriously injured because of her actions, straining her relationships with both.
Conrad, in fact, breaks up with her precisely because, as he tells her, he can't go on "watching you plunge ahead without regard for anything or anyone except your own private version of justice." Paretsky is focusing thoughtfully on the very nature of the tough detective character, skillfully weaving that question into the story itself.
I found myself wondering about my own occasionally negative response to Warshawski's aggressive manner. Given the model of the tough detective character, isn't aggression practically a job requirement? Is this just a sexist response to a character trait that in Marlowe or Spade would be considered admirable but in a woman is perceived as inappropriately bullheaded?
Since I'm a bullheaded woman myself, I don't think it's that. The difference, or at least one of them, is that Hammett's and Chandler's characters leaven their aggression with wit. They're wry, they're dry, and Marlowe especially is self-deprecating as all get-out.
Self-deprecation is not V.I.'s forte, and, although Paretsky can be funny, it's not a consistent element of her style or Warshawski's. But she has other strengths, and they make Tunnel Vision well worth reading.

Titles discussed in Colette's List
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Colette's Archive

Colette's List 1: Hiaasen: Murder Under The Palms

Colette's List 2: Hall, MacDonald & More Murder

Colette's List 3: Crews: The Artist As Scar Lover

Colette's List 4: Mosley: Easy In The City Of Angels

Colette's List 5: Chandler: Trouble Is My Business

Colette's List 6: Mango, Mortal Sin & Margaritaville

Colette's List 7: A Monstrous Regiment of Women

Colette's List 8: The Inferno: James Ellroy's L.A.

Colette's List 9: Spenser Is Parker, Only Taller

Colette Bancroft, a writer known at various times in her career to date as The Goddess of the Classroom, The Empress of Haute Cuisine and The Spitball Queen, is at work on a mystery novel of her own. She is an editor on the Metro Desk at the St. Petersburg Times.

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