It's officially Women's Equality Day, also the anniversary of the the 19th Amendment to the Constitution which guaranteed women the right to vote (August 26, 1920), so I thought it fitting to highlight a few mystery dames in the news lately:
The Nashville Scene profiled Karin Slaughter, in which the article's author, Michael Ray Taylor, said, "Slaughter's literary depth allows complex characters to probe ugly, brutally realistic crimes in a manner more akin to the PBS series Mystery than to, say, CSI: Miami. The richness of the worlds she creates may be one reason that her novels are enormously popular in England and much of Europe. Slaughter writes crime thrillers for well-read grownups."
The Washingtonian had a brief profile of Martha Grimes, who is also a local girl in the DC area, although as the article pointed out, the internationally known mystery writer goes all but unrecognized around Washington—which is fine with her.
The Guardian wrote about Kate Atkinson, pointing out that "a Literary writer with a capital L (though one with a nicely disreputable sense of fun), Atkinson unexpectedly turned to crime fiction. Perhaps she wanted to see if the limitations of genre were paradoxically liberating, or perhaps she just wanted to play literary pranks of a more subtle variety. Frankly, it's hard to care when the results are this good."
In a Fort Myers News-Press article, they take the case of Lisa Black and her equivalent of a literary "do-over," as sometimes happens in the publishing industry. Elizabeth Becka, author and forensics specialist, had two well-received CSI-style mysteries featuring single mom/forensics specialist Evelyn James published by Hyperion. Unfortunately, her sales didn't impress Hyperion, so she switched publishers, identities and protagonists, and her books now feature single mom/forensics specialist Theresa MacLean under the author's name of Lisa Black, published by William Morrow. Let that be a lesson to authors to never say die...
The Washington Post reported on Brunonia Barry's self-published paranormal mystery, The Lace Reader which later became the subject of a multi-million-dollar bidding war among New York publishers and a publicity campaign most authors just dream about (or is that a nightmare?), including a sweepstakes, a "pitch kit" with a walking tour map of Salem, and something the publisher ominously describes as an "early widget disseminated online in a viral consumer campaign."
The New York Times reviewed Joyce Carol Oates's fictionalized account of the Jon Benet Ramsey tragedy, titled My Sister, My Love, concluding ultimately that the book "could have been a powerful indictment of cultural complicity in child abuse, but Oates emerges as so superior to her characters that complicity isn’t acknowledged, only the most facile sorts of blame. The real transgression isn’t against fictional characters but against Joyce Carol Oates’s unquestionable genius. She is capable of so much more."
And the CSI Effect continues with a surge the number of women choosing forensic science degrees and careers. An Associated Press review of accredited forensic science programs in the United States found about 75 percent of graduates are women, an increase from about 64 percent in 2000. Those in the field estimate that the nation's forensic labs are at least 60 percent female. At Virginia's Department of Forensic Science, 36 of 47 scientists hired since 2005 were women.
Hi BV,
I linked to this post on Women of Mystery.
Terrie
Posted by: Terrie Farley Moran | August 27, 2008 at 09:12 AM
Thanks, Terrie! We owe those Suffragettes a debt of gratitude, don't we?
Posted by: BV Lawson | August 28, 2008 at 10:51 AM