Introduction to Marele Day: Reading Women's Crime Fiction, Some Problems

Levy, Bronwen, Hecate

The emergence over the past few years of a flourishing feminist crime fiction raises questions for writers and readers. In the article on her novel, The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender, Marele Day outlines the challenges of the depiction of a professional female sleuth. Day employs the traditionally masculine, hard-boiled (or Chandleresque) version of the genre, but with an important difference: Claudia Valentine is both "a fully realised woman and a competent professional operator."(1) Women private investigators, of course, do not feature in the American hard-boiled school where women are victims or seductresses, the objects, not the subjects of inquiry. By contrast, the women …

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Publication information: Article title: Introduction to Marele Day: Reading Women's Crime Fiction, Some Problems. Contributors: Levy, Bronwen - Author. Journal title: Hecate. Volume: 15. Issue: 1 Publication date: May 31, 1989. Page number: 42. © 1999 Hecate Press. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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