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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   2005 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 12, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Okay, my St Peter's digital fast is over. I avoided you, Reddit and other useless websites, with YT remaining the only shameful exception.

I even did some actual reading. I think I asked you people once if there was a serious gender-swapped noir detective novel that wasn't a novella inside Hyperion for a project of mine that I will probably never even start, and got no real replies.

However, I don't remember how, but just before my digital fast I found Hardboiled and High Heeled: The Woman Detective in Popular Culture by Linda Mizejewski. That was what I was looking for: someone who has done all the legwork for me. I cracked open the epub and started reading.

I came out the other end with three things: a weird disgust at the level of girl-crush the author had on Clarissa Starling, a surprise that shouldn't have been one at the fact lesbian detective fiction exists, and a list of authors that I was going to check out.

Major caveat: my wife reads mystery stories with a fucking notepad, listing all clues and trying to solve the case before the writer gets to it. I think it's masochism, I look at the tropes and try to use my guts. If I guess right, then I pat myself on the back. If I don't, I don't care. So don't expect me to evaluate how good these novels are as mystery fiction.

Step one: Sara Paretsky and her novels Indemnity Only and Deadlock, with V.I. Warshawski as the PI

Good tropes:

  • asshole with a heart of gold
  • cheap dingy office
  • terrible personal grooming skills (clothing excepted)
  • love of whisky
  • checking out bars on a hunch
  • getting pistol-whipped
  • rescuing a gentleman in distress (I didn't expect the trope to be played so straight)
  • bodies piling up as the story progresses

Inverted tropes:

  • it's not always night and/or raining in Chicago
  • instead of the seedy underbelly it's always white-collar crime of the most white-collar sort and then someone freaks out and ends up with a dead body

Of all the authors, it's the one I might keep reading.

Step two: Sue Grafton and her novel A is for Alibi, with Kinsey Millhone as the PI

Good tropes:

  • not quite an asshole, more of a doggedly perseverant personality
  • a homme fatale, played so incredibly straight
  • bodies piling up as the story progresses

A town in Middle California is one of the most middle-class locations you can think of, not enough city to have an actual underbelly. I might try the B novel just in case, but it's not what I was looking for.

Step three: Marcia Muller and her novel Edwin of the Iron Shoes, with Sharon McCone as the PI

I dropped this novel after just one chapter, as Sharon was a company investigator, not a private one. That's why there were two Paretsky novels on my list.

Step four: Linda Barnes and her novel The Trouble of Fools, with Carlotta Carlyle as the PI

I haven't got to this one yet, but the blurbs look promising.

Step five: G.G. Fickling and their novel This Girl For Hire, with Honey West as the PI

That's definitely not noir, but maybe some sexploitation mystery fiction will help me too? Again, haven't gotten to it yet.

Only books I can think of are the 'Blood' series by Tanya Huff, who's also apparently a lesbian. Or at least married to a woman. It's kinda... noir-ish, maybe. Definitely not a sunny optimistic kind of novel. Protagonist is an up & coming successful detective, gets an incurable eye disease and is relegated to desk work only, so she quits and goes private. It's a urban fantasy, of the 'hidden world' subtype, where supernatural is very lightly present and not acknowledged by the authorities.

Funnily enough, there are some romance elements - e.g. the vampire who's a side character is a historical period romance novelist (easy gig if you lived thru it) , and later on in the series there's a hetero romance subplot.

My approach to my wife's thrillers has always been closer to yours. She's gotten laughing-annoyed enough at me guessing right through raw trope assumptions that I prefer to hold who I'm thinking in until she finishes.

Your genre requirements are pretty tight. A ton of these thrillers have women becoming investigators through necessity or interest instead of being a professional to kick things off. Have you dipped into the wider pool at all, or do you find it insufferable?

Like Gideon the prophet, I don't want to deal with a wide pool.

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