{"id":16427,"date":"2015-09-01T13:10:25","date_gmt":"2015-09-01T17:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=16427"},"modified":"2015-09-03T17:57:33","modified_gmt":"2015-09-03T21:57:33","slug":"women-crime-writers-eight-suspense-novels-of-the-1940s-50s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2015\/09\/01\/women-crime-writers-eight-suspense-novels-of-the-1940s-50s\/","title":{"rendered":"Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m starting this post out by confessing to an unfortunate personal blindness: when I think of formative American crime books, I mostly\u00a0think of male authors, like\u00a0Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett,\u00a0James\u00a0M. Cain.\u00a0The characters they invented are part of the cultural consciousness, thanks in large part to the wave of films they inspired, films made by men, presented from a male’s perspective — films that often show a woman’s intelligence, if shown at all,\u00a0by showing duplicity. I love these works as well, for a variety of reasons, and I’m not even close to an expert in this area;\u00a0this self-observation is\u00a0limited to a\u00a0general reader, though\u00a0I believe my myopic perspective is probably\u00a0shared by many in the general reading population. And while I have read seminal crime novels by American women authors —\u00a0such as\u00a0Patricia Highsmith and Dorothy B. Hughes, whose novels are at least as (though I’d argue more)\u00a0captivating and ground-breaking as those by the\u00a0men I listed above\u00a0— for some reason I subconsciously passed\u00a0their work\u00a0off\u00a0as exceptions, perhaps even as offshoots from the great work done by British women, such as Agatha Christie and Daphne du Maurier.<\/p>\n

It’s uncomfortable to think of how many\u00a0blind spots and cultural biases I harbor, but I’m thrilled to have my eyes opened in this particular\u00a0matter thanks to the solid case presented by The Library of America that not only were women authors writing phenomenal, essential books in the formative years of American crime fiction but they were also excelling and breaking ground. Today, The Library of America is publishing a special box set, Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s and 50s<\/em>, an invaluable (and delightful) reminder of the work women authors were doing that has, sadly, been largely overshadowed for decades.<\/p>\n

\"Women-Crime-box_JT_rev\"<\/p>\n

The set is divided into two volumes, one presenting four books from the 1940s and one\u00a0four from\u00a0the 1950s. Here are the books included:<\/p>\n