October CATWoman: Women and Crime

Women’s involvement in crime may be as a victim, a perpetrator, an investigator or a writer about crime.

The victim in a lot of crime writing often appears to be simply a gimmick to get the story moving but one book which I shall be reading for this month’s challenge is The Five by Hallie Rubenhold, about the victims of Jack the Ripper.



Since most crime fiction takes the form of whodunnits and we have to beware of spoilers, I highlight here Out by Natsuo Kirino, in which a group of women help cover up their coworker’s murder of her abusive husband (which happens in the first chapter) and Alias Grace, a true crime novelisation by Margaret Atwood. For more true crime where women are the perpetrators, you can try the LT subject search women murderers.

A lot of crime fiction has women investigating crime whether as police officers or amateur detectives from Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple to all subgenres in the present day. In real life, women work in all sorts of ways in investigating and prosecuting crime in the justice system. My niece used to work in a forensic laboratory, so my choice is Traces by Patricia Wiltshire, the memoirs of a forensic scientist.



Women have of course always been in the forefront of crime writers, especially since the 1920s. One only has to think of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, P. D. James, and Ruth Rendell. In recent news, Lucy Worsley’s biography, Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman has just come out.

Those of a more serious bent may appreciate the insights of women criminologists, a list of whom can be found on Wikipedia.

Both true crime and crime fiction are very much focused on murder (or is that just me?), so please do chime in with true crime and crime fiction which take other crimes as their subject matter and with women and crime outside the Anglosphere.

Please add your reading to the Wiki thread: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/CATWoman_2022#October:_Women_and_Crime_....

I am currently reading all the Miss Marples, one a month, so my next one is A Pocket Full of Rye.
But I also found this, which seems perfect as it is Victober in October, reading Victorian literature - The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime.

Not sure yet what I'll read, but pretty sure I'm going to like this one!

>2 JayneCM: That does sound perfect for Victober! I am going to see if my library has it--thank you!

>2 JayneCM: Book bullet :-) I've added The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime to my wishlist

I have many from which to choose from my shelves. I think I will go with Gone Again where a woman turns up missing. As of yet, I'm not sure if there was a crime, but others have tagged it as a mystery crime. I also have several books by Ann Rule on my shelves--a great true crime writer.

I have Deadly Intent the 4th volume of the Anna Travis police procedural series by Lynda La Plante set aside for this challenge.

>1 Robertgreaves: Today I picked up Agatha Christie's An Autobiography at a library sale for $1. It's a first edition (1977) hardcover, but very beat up. So it's perfect timing for this challenge.

I'm going to try to get to Know My Name by Chanel Miller for this month's challenge.

Shoot! Not as many on my tbr as I thought there might be. The one I most want to read may not come in time from the library:
Lady Killers / Tori Telfer

I'm thinking of reading Shizuko Natsuki's mystery The Third Lady.

I was initially looking for nonfiction, but if my nonfiction choice does not arrive from the library, I might read (or maybe I'll read this, in addition):
Pretty Baby / Mary Kubica

I'm planning to read For the Love of Mike by Rhys Bowen, an early Molly Murphy Mystery.

I read A Killer in King's Cove by Iona Whishaw

What drew me to this mystery is that it's set in 1946 in the interior of British Columbia, the province where I live, in fact, in the exact area where I live. In the early part, Whishaw's language is oddly drawn out and formal, avoiding contractions and using sentences such as 'Let us get down to business' before becoming more comfortable on the page. The protagonist - and at one time a suspect - moved from England and her job in the secret service at the end of the war to live in a distant rural community. When a man is found murdered in her well, she finds herself in the middle of an investigation with wide-ranging links. It's the first in the Lane Winslow series. Recommended for fans of Maisie Dobbs.

COMPLETED Traces by Patricia Wiltshire

My review:
Patricia Wiltshire is a pioneering forensic ecologist specialising in palynology - the study of pollen and spores. She compares the pollen and spores found in a suspect's clothing or vehicle with those at the crime scene (and apparently they can vary enormously even in a matter of a few yards) to find out whether the suspect was at the scene or not. If, for example, X says a couple had consensual sex here while Y says it was rape there, Patricia Wiltshire can assess whose story at least gets the location right.

As she rightly assumes that her readers (at least me) are almost totally ignorant of palynology there is a certain amount of dry technical detail to be explained, but the cases she uses as illustrations and the story of her life are interesting enough to keep the pages turning.

I read Elegy for Mary Turner: An Illustrated Account of a Lynching by Rachel Marie-Crane Williams.

Little Red House / Liv Andersson
4.25 stars

In 1997, Eve’s daughter Kelsey has disappeared. Eve tracks her to a small town in New Mexico where the trail ends, but Eve is sure Kelsey is there somewhere. But the townspeople not only don’t help, they seem to be covering up something. Twenty-some years later, Eve has died, and her adopted twin daughters Lisa and Connie are left with very different inheritances. Lisa, the “good” daughter, is left with pretty much everything of value. Connie was left a small house in a town she’s never heard of in New Mexico… a town where strangers aren’t welcome, and the house leaves something (or a lot of somethings) to be desired. There are a lot of rules to this inheritance for both Lisa and Connie. Connie was never treated well by Eve.

This was really good. It pulled me in quickly and kept me wanting to read to find out what was going on. I’ve read a lot of mystery-thrillers the past couple of years and sometimes they have blended into one another. I think this one will stand out in my memory. Have to say that Eve sure was a hateful character – both in 1997 and in Connie’s memories as she looks back on how Eve treated her. I should add that the book does go back and forth in time – in 1997 from Eve’s perspective, and in the present day from Connie’s.

I read Das gefrorene Licht by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir (English title: "My Soul To Take"). It is the second book in the Thóra Guðmundsdóttir series.

I just read For the Love of Mike, an early Molly Murphy mystery by Rhys Bowen. Molly runs into a lot of danger in this novel.

Starting The Art of the English Murder by Lucy Worsley

COMPLETED The Art of the British Murder by Lucy Worsley

My review:
Lucy Worsley looks at murder as entertainment through true crime and fiction from Thomas De Quincey's 1827 essay on the public reaction to the Ratcliffe Highway Murders in 1811 to the shift from the puzzles of Golden Age fiction to the more noir-ish post WWII scene.

Fascinating, though I wish she'd carried on up to the present and there were some parts where it was a little too obvious this was the book of the TV series rather than something that stood on its own merits. So, I may well watch the series, which appears to be available on YouTube.

Just finished Sinister Graves, the third book in Marcie R. Rendon's Cash Blackbear series. It came out today and I have been waiting all year for this one! Cash is a great main character and Rendon's writing is very evocative of the highways up in the NW area of Minnesota. She has dedicated this book to the Missing and murdered Indiginous women. #mmiw

I continued with my Miss Marple read and read A Pocket Full of Rye for this one.

I'm reading The Man with the Dark Beard by Annie Haynes, published in 1928, the first book in the Inspector Stoddart series.

I completed Deadly Intent by Lynda La Plante. I enjoyed this book although at over 600 pages I felt it was a little too long.

COMPLETED The Five by Hallie Rubenhold.

My review:
The five in question are the five "canonical" victims of Jack the Ripper. The author looks at what is known or can be reconstructed (there is an awful lot of "would have" and "must have" involved) of their lives up until the night each of them met her end and how they came to be there, especially as none of them were native to Whitechapel. Nor, despite assumptions then and now, were they all prostitutes. Except for the last victim, Mary Jane Kelly, they were vulnerable because they were homeless.

A fascinating look at what the lives of the poor, particularly poor women, were like in Victorian Britain, what they could aspire to and what failure meant for them.

I just finished The Art of Theft by Sherry Thomas, book #4 in the Lady Sherlock series.

Starting A Murder is Announced, one of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple mysteries

I've finished The Third Lady by Shizuko Natsuki. Natsuki has been called the queen of Japanese crime because she published over 80 mystery and crime novels.

November's Thread is up: https://www.librarything.com/topic/345138#n7954169

COMPLETED A Murder Is Announced by Agatha Christie.

Hour of the Witch / Chris Bohjalian
3.5 stars

In 17th century Boston, Mary has been married to Thomas for 5 years. He is incredibly abusive toward her, both physically and mentally, but always when there is no one else to notice anything askew. When Mary finally decides she can take it no longer (after he has put a (new-fangled) fork (aka Devil’s tines) through her hand), she is determined to divorce him. In the meantime, though, there have been whisperings of witchcraft. There is a woman in town who dislikes Mary, and Mary and Thomas’ indentured servant also suspects Mary of witchcraft (in part, due to those forks!).

This was good. It felt slow-moving even though we got to Mary’s petition for divorce fairly early on in the book, but of course, this wasn’t the entirety of the story. There were a couple of twists toward the end. I found the bit about the forks interesting – that is, they were a new item and people looked on them suspiciously. I had no idea! I did like the book, but there are others by the author that I’ve liked better.

I'm going to stretch things a bit and count The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman since two of the characters in the Thursday Murder club are women.

I read The Headhunters by Peter Lovesey. Two of the main characters are women as well as the lead detective Hen Mallin.

A good mystery: good plot, well-developed characters, and an exciting finish, but Hen Mallin will never be able to compete with Peter Diamond. She just doesn't have the personality to entice a reader. A minor point because Lovesey has only written three novels in the Hen Mallin series.

I listened to an audiobook read by a very poor narrator. I always enjoy Peter Lovesey's books and decided to stick with this one but I'm sure a print copy, had one been available, would have got a higher rating from me.

I read Driftnet - Glasgow crime, first in a series. I'll read more.

Another one read: You Will Remember Me by Hannah Mary McKinnon
Jack Smith wakened up on a beach, cold, with a gash on his head and no memory of who he is or how he got there. His girlfriend, Lily, waited in vain for Jack to bring their usual pancakes for breakfast. Jack eventually finds his way back to his early home with his step-sister, Maya, who is delighted to be reunited with him again. McKinnon's plot may sound a little predictable but that's not the case. And the ending arrives like a thunderbolt!

I have finished Die zerbrochene Uhr, a historical mystery written by a woman.

Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History / Tori Telfer
4 stars

This book looks at historical women serial killers. There are a number of stories of different women in different places and times, from the 13th century up to the 1950s.

As interesting as I found all of these stories as I read them, they do read like short stories, so (unfortunately) by the end, I have already forgotten details of the earlier stories in the book. Even so, I was certainly very interested and very much “enjoyed” reading the stories.

Many of the women killed via poison, but not all. There were a few very cruel women included (that is, they killed by other cruel ways); the two that immediately come to mind were both nobility in their respective countries and time periods. I really liked the author’s writing style, and she even injected a bit of humour at times. I also liked that the author was also able to find out personal information on these women, not just information about the murders they committed (she talks in the afterword about cutting out a couple of people she wanted to include, but she just couldn’t find enough info on them).

I finished The Bangalore Detectives Club by Harini Nagendra, a mystery featuring a female amateur sleuth and written by a woman. It was okay, but I won’t continue if it becomes a series.

COMPLETED The Stranger Diaries and The Postscript Murders by Elly Griffiths, both featuring DS Harbinder Kaur, a Sikh woman, the first being a homage to the gothic style and the second to Golden Age detection.

I have finished Mord in Sunset Hall, written by a woman. The murder case is solved by an old lady who used to be a police officer.

I also finished Der Nachbar, which is very short. Written by a Brazilian author and very good.

I also read Aunt Bessie Considers by Diana Xarissa. Aunt Bessie is an elderly lady who is good at solving murders.

That brings us to the end of October's CATWoman. I hope everybody enjoyed their reading, rediscovering familiar authors and finding new ones. Thank you all for participating and also thank you to those who followed along without putting fingers to keyboard.

Shadows Before by Dorothy Bowers
Some years after Matthew Weir escaped the noose for a crime he vehemently denies, his wife was poisoned. Did someone add an ingredient to her homemade herbal tea concoction or was it suicide. There are lots of mysterious characters to choose from in this country house murder.

This 1939 mystery felt like a doorstopper because it took me so long to read it. Despite a good plot, the story was slow and somehow just dragged on and on. Beautiful language and descriptive passages that dressed up a simple plot and padded the story. Bowers is often compared to Agatha Christie but the Queen of Crime, Dame Agatha, always holds my interest and keeps me turning pages as quickly as possible.