Gendered Genre: Women Detectives in World Literature

Abstract

In the past three decades, an entirely new subgenre of mystery fiction has evolved in which women wrote about women protagonists concerned with women’s issues.  It was a new voice that allowed woman’s perspective to break through the rigidity of the traditional formula of the sub- genre, detective fiction. This mystery fiction became popular in 1977 with the publication of Marcia Muller’s “Edwin of the Iron Shoes,” the first of the Sharon McCone series.  From then on, women writers increasingly entered the market with both amateur and professional women protagonists.