Women are the primary readers of crime fiction, which is interesting considering we are also the primary victims of the crimes that occur in these novels. Perhaps that is the reason why in the past few years new women writers have emerged in the genre to talk about violence from a woman’s perspective. Three leaders in the field who all have new books published this summer are Mo Hayder, Denise Mina and Tess Gerritsen; all have made a conscious decision to discuss crimes against women in a starkly realistic way. They are not the demure, cosy authors of yesteryear, but concerned women who are trying to get to the core of violence and ask the central question: why?
No author lives in a vacuum, but I have always felt that crime fiction writers in particular have their fingers on the pulse of society. In our reality-obsessed world, crime and justice present a unique opportunity to talk about the issues that shape our lives. Collectively, we have become connoisseurs of crime. CSI, Law and Order, NYPD Blue and other cop/medical shows dominate television schedules. Crime fiction tops the bestseller lists. As world events - and leaders - tumble out of control, it’s refreshing to watch a show or read a book where the bad guys are caught and the good guys go on to fight another day.
Women on the receiving end of violent crime are the face of the nightly news. It is as if crimes that victimise women are somehow more disturbing to the population at large. Perhaps this is the reason why crime fiction has chosen to focus on these issues. For women all over the world, abuse and assault are everyday occurrences. In America, the number one reason for death during pregnancy is not complications from delivery, but homicide, usually at the hands of the baby’s father. In South Africa, rape is so commonplace that women are offered “rape insurance” to cover the cost of HIV medication in case the virus is spread during an attack. In developing countries, young girls are sold into slavery and prostitution, their bodies used for drug trafficking, their minds destroyed by poverty or brutality.
Despite this, women aren’t encouraged to talk about violence, let alone write about it. From an early age, most young girls are taught to control their anger. This is not to say that the capacity for violence does not exist in us, but that we find more covert ways to express it. It is basic playground arithmetic: if a boy is mad at another boy, he punches him. If a girl is mad at another girl, she spreads rumours about her and gives her an eating disorder. Because we cannot rely on brute strength to defend ourselves, we must be more cunning in our attacks. Unfortunately, this internalisation of anger is never so vicious as when it is turned on ourselves.
Lena Adams, a character in my Grant County series, is my response to this self-destructive behaviour. Lena has been brutally raped and she internalises her anger, punishing herself because she cannot punish her attacker. Unfortunately, Lena’s reaction is more common than not, but I have had a handful of male readers come up to me and say that there’s no way a woman like Lena would behave in such a self-destructive manner. “She’s too strong,” they’ll say, or “She’s too tough.” The fact is that strong women get raped. The truth is that tough women can make stupid decisions. When I began thinking about Lena and the story she would tell, I wanted to address this dichotomy. I wanted to show that being raped doesn’t make a woman a martyr, nor does it confer upon her some saintly status. It makes her angry, and it makes her react - sometimes in shocking ways.
For all the progress women have made in society, the stigma of sexual assault still exists. In a lot of ways, we are still tied to that old notion of wholesomeness, of our worth being defined by our purity. As we gain more status, sexual assault increasingly becomes about a loss of power - the psychology of sexual abuse is an intricate web of personal blame, fury and fear, and modern female authors are speaking to these dichotomies in voices that have not previously been heard.
Historically, crime novels have shown female victims of violence in a very black-and-white way. Good or bad. Virginal or soiled. The Madonna/whore archetype never existed so purely as in the annals of crime fiction. The classic example of this comes from the Raymond Chandler mould of women gone wrong. The Chandler hero is a nice, upstanding gent until some leggy dame persuades him to do something totally against his sweet nature: steal, lie, or kill her abusive husband/lover/father. In the end, of course, the woman has to be punished for leading him astray, usually in a seriously nasty way: crushed by a train, shot 16 times, thrown off a cliff. Thankfully, our gent manages to redeem himself, usually by being the hero who pushes the temptress in front of the train, shoots her or throws her off a cliff; cue wry remark about the perils of love.
As crime fiction has evolved, so too has the female character. The manipulative Daisy in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby gave way to the lying Mayella Ewell in To Kill a Mockingbird . Daphne Du Maurier’s nasty Mrs Danvers was succeeded by Stephen King’s Carrie. While over the years there has been definite progress made in the depiction of women in novels, we have had to struggle to get past the idea that there needed to be a man standing in the wings to push her or lead the way. The 1950s teenage sleuth Nancy Drew had her father to fall back on. FBI agent Clarice Starling needed Hannibal Lecter to help her find Buffalo Bill.
The 1990s saw a greater leap toward enlightenment, and some of my favourite writers - Peter Robinson, Michael Connelly and James Lee Burke, to name a few - showed that you can still be a tough guy and respect women. Ian Rankin, Mark Billingham and George Pelecanos continue to write about man’s capacity for compassion in the face of darkness, talking positively about the strong women in their lives while giving a male perspective on the plague of violence. The world of contemporary crime fiction provides a unique sounding-board for many diverse points of view, and it is perhaps for this reason that women have so quickly ascended the ranks.
Among the women of crime, Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky, Marcia Muller and Patricia Cornwell all deserve credit for cracking the glass ceiling.
I remember how liberating it was reading about Paretsky’s heroine V.I. Warshawski when I was a teenager. Here was a woman who managed to be tough, smart and independent without compromising herself. Like most young girls, I was under the impression that you had to choose between being a woman and being strong. Not so in the brave new world of female crime fiction. Suddenly, the sidekick was pushing the man out of the way. She was talking about the crimes that affect women from a woman’s point of view. Most importantly, she was exploring the psychology of abuse. She was moving from victim to survivor.
Alice Sebold is now a household name for her bestselling novel The Lovely Bones, but back in 1999 when she wrote Lucky, a memoir detailing her brutal rape in college, not many people were listening. A running theme in this book is that very fact: no one wanted her to talk about her experience. If she had been mugged or carjacked or robbed at gunpoint, people would have encouraged her to spill the details. Because the crime against her was of a sexual nature, the implied message was that she should keep it to herself.
In Blindsighted, my first novel, Grant County coroner Sara Linton investigates some gruesome rape cases, and the secret violence in her own past comes to light in the course of the plot. As I toured the country with it, I was often questioned about my motives for writing about sexual assault in such a frank way. I wanted to show violence for what it is. I made a conscious decision to not gloss over the events that affect my characters’ lives. Similarly, the character Maureen O’Donnell, introduced in Garnet Hill, Denise Mina’s award-winning first novel, speaks to women’s experiences in a refreshingly realistic way. Maureen was sexually abused by her father as a child. Like many adult survivors, she anaesthetises herself with drugs and alcohol. Her family have turned their backs on her, refusing to face the fact of her abuse. The rawness of Maureen’s need, and her furious self-destruction, key into the silent rage of child sexual abuse, opening a door that has been tightly closed in fiction until now. Maureen does not need a man to save her. She needs truth and clarity, and the only way she can move forward is if she finds these answers on her own.
This focus on recovery - wanting to understand the “why” - is something that defines women’s crime fiction. While men are certainly capable of writing about women’s issues in sensitive ways, there is something about a woman’s perspective on violence against women that cuts closer to the core. If anything, I think male writers as well as readers benefit from this perspective. Family, friends, fathers, brothers - all the people in a victim’s life are touched. Violent crimes rarely leave just one victim.
Karin Slaughter is one of a new breed of women crimewriters, taking over from the more genteel style of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. Since her first book three years ago, Slaughter has shot to the top of the bestseller lists with crime novels that are full of graphic descriptions of violence, depravity and blood. Her fourth book, “Indelible” is just published.
TOKYO
by Mo Hayder
Bantam Press £12.99, 409 pages
DECEPTION
by Denise Mina
Little, Brown $23.95, 320 pages
BODY DOUBLE
by Tess Gerritsen
Ballantine Books $24.95, 352 pages
R IS FOR RICOCHET
by Sue Grafton
Putnam $26.95, 350 pages
TRACE
by Patricia Cornwell
Little, Brown £17.99, 405 pages
INDELIBLE
by Karin Slaughter
Century £12.99, 372 pages
