Female Detectives

In many ways, it is a bit redundant to have a category called “Female Detectives” because to a large extent they have become the norm, rather than the exception.  The current popular form of the mystery novel reflects the fact that there are only 8,000,000 regular fiction readers in the United States and 80% of them are women.  Thus, a majority of successful contemporary mystery novels feature women protagonists or strong female characters working equally with the male protagonist.  The male protagonist (if there is one) must be appealing to women.  This has spelled the end of any narrative where a Lew Archer-type hardboiled detective is talking or thinking about “pointy breasts,” such as in Ross MacDonald’s 1949 classic The Moving Target.