Women Crime Writers

I have been asked about my passion. Well, I’ve got two. One is history. And the other is writing. Lucky me, I get to combine them when I write my historical mysteries. Publishing my novels was something that was a long time in coming. Through over a decade of hard work, perseverance, and support from a lot of women in the same boat, I finally saw the fruits of my labors.

I don’t write about women much in my novels. I always had a rather male-centric writing style, but I certainly benefited from association with women. Specifically, Sisters in Crime. Sisters in Crime or SinC (pronounced “sink”) is not a group of manic nuns. Instead, it’s an international organization of women crime and mystery writers who share their woes, their stories, their successes with like-minded women on listservs and in person in chapter meetings all over this country and Canada and at various mystery fan conventions and writing conferences. It was tough as a would-be author to slog through the mire of the publishing industry. I didn’t even see how it was possible to get published in the traditional sense with an agent and a big New York publisher without some sort of help. For me, that help came from this organization.

Writing is a very solitary job. You sit in an office alone, writing for hours at a time with nothing but your keyboard and your imagination. And though I do enjoy this solo enterprise, you can’t succeed in a vacuum. It takes the eyes of critique partners and perhaps a shoulder to cry on. Sometimes my snail mail delivery (in those days) was full of rejections. It’s hard to take that alone.

Thirty-nine years ago, mystery author Sara Paretsky (creator of the V.I. Warshawski mysteries) saw inequality when it came to reviews in the major publications. Mystery novels written by women were being snubbed when it came to reviews. Why the inequality? In some cases, male reviewers flat out refused to review books written by women! Are you shocked? So was she. She networked with other female mystery novelists and ended up developing Sisters in Crime.

Today, the main mission of Sisters in Crime is to “promote the professional development and advancement of women crime writers to achieve equality in the industry.” It doesn’t mean we exclude men from membership. Oh no. They are our “misters” in crime. But each year, SinC surveys various periodicals throughout the country and does the numbers. The survey shows how many men and how many women authors are reviewed. Unfortunately, the numbers are still unequal, even though more women than men write mystery novels and more women than men buy them.

I don’t mean this to be a big advertisement for Sisters in Crime, but it has been the one place where I have truly gotten some meaningful help in my long search to get published. Through the information I gleaned and the networking I did, I was able to get a handle on this difficult and challenging industry.

Dame Agatha

But what about those women of crime writing in days of yore? If we look back, everyone thinks instantly of Agatha Christie, the all-time bestselling author. But there were certainly others I wished to emulate.

Even though Dorothy L. Sayers was not writing historicals but contemporary mysteries about her character, Lord Peter Wimsey in the early part of the 20th century, she was an innovator. Where Christie prided herself on her puzzles, Sayers was ahead of her time by making her hero a three-dimensional character, giving Lord Peter a backstory and a continuing story, especially when he met the love of his life, Harriet Vane.

I know I am skipping a lot of female crime writers, but I want to go directly to Dorothy B. Hughes, one of the stars of noir.

I was drawn in to her stories for her detailed sense of place, one of my favorites being Ride the Pink Horse. Believe me, if you’re feeling cold, read this one and you’ll be sweating in no time. In 1951 she received an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America in the category of Outstanding Mystery Criticism, and in 1978 she was given the MWA’s Grand Master award. Three of her books were made into Hollywood films and you must see them, too:  The Fallen Sparrow (1943), In a Lonely Place (1950), starring Humphrey Bogart; and the most unusual and my fave Ride the Pink Horse (1947), directed by and starring Robert Montgomery.

There are more female authors before her, and after her. They keep coming, despite some inequality in the marketplace. But they keep writing, and killing it. As it were.

And speaking of marketplace, what finally happened to me and my books, you ask? In 2007, I sold my first book, VEIL OF LIES to St. Martin’s, a big New York publisher. And next year in 2026, I am looking forward to the publication of my forty-forth and -fifth novelS, DEVIL’S GAMBIT and THE VAMPYRE CLIENT. Write on!