AMERICAN AUTHORS CHALLENGE--SEPTEMBER 2023--LADIES OF CRIME

We should all be spoiled for choice this month, as the options for reading crime novels written by women are many. Possibly some familiar names such as Sue Grafton, Margaret Maron, Faye Kellerman, Julia Spencer Fleming, Patricia Cornwell or Linda Fairstein might be calling you to catch up with a series you already enjoy. Or maybe you're looking for someone entirely new. There is no way to be comprehensive with a list, and personal taste is paramount with this sort of thing, but if you're looking for recommendations, I'll throw out a few.

For starters, you could pick up the Library of America's two-volume set of Women Crime Writers, containing 8 novels of the 40s and 50s by Patricia Highsmith, Charlotte Armstrong, Vera Caspary, Elisabeth Sanxay Holding and others. Some classics there.

Lyndsay Faye's "copper star" series set in the early days of the NYPD (before it was called that, in fact)

Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon series, each one set in a different U. S. National Park or monument

Marcia Clark You may remember her as the lead prosecutor of the O. J. Simpson murder trial. She has written two crime series, one featuring a criminal defense attorney, and the other a prosecuting DA.

Marcie Rendon is a Native American author and arts activist who has written 3 crime novels beginning with the prize-winning Murder on the Red River.

Lilian Jackson Braun If you're looking for cozy, with cats, Braun's The Cat Who... series is almost endless, and very entertaining if taken in small doses. If you want books written by a cat, try Sneaky Pie Brown's Mrs. Murphy series (co-written with her human, Rita Mae Brown.

Sharyn McCrumb takes Appalachian ballads and works them into gripping full-length tales of murder and treachery...The Ballad of Tom Dooley, and The Ballad of Frankie Silver being two of her best.

There's a fair amount of non-fiction crime writing by women out there as well. Marcia Clark, Linda Fairstein and Patricia Cornwell have all published accounts of actual trials or investigations. Cornwell claims to have solved Jack the Ripper's identity. If you have the stomach for it, how about Ann Rule's The Stranger Beside Me: Ted Bundy: The Shocking Inside Story or one of her other true crime offerings. Or maybe Piper Kernan's memoir, Orange is the New Black. Kernan is a convicted felon, now an author, lecturer and member of the board of the Women’s Prison Association. A book just released last month, entitled The Girls Who Fought Crime: The Untold True Story of the Country’s First Female Investigator and Her Crime Fighting Squad, is intriguing me.

Excuse me now...I need to go read something gruesome before bed.

What are you contemplating for this theme month?

I am looking at Attica Locke, Linda, or Gillian Flynn.

If I hadn't read all her Lily Bard and Aurora Teagarden mysteries I'd pull in one of Charlaine Harris's mysteries for this. Some of the Sookie Stackhouse books are mysteries too.

I will be continuing my re-read of the In Death series, reading Origin in Death by J.D. Robb.

ETA: She also has a new book coming out this month that I am going to try and shoehorn in as well.

I am planning to read A Death of No Importance by Mariah Fredericks, historical fiction with some crime.

>2 PaulCranswick: I enjoyed the one Attica Locke I read in full, Cutting Season, although I had a couple quibbles with it. And then, I think, I Pearl-ruled two more of hers, possibly for nit-picky reasons that wouldn't bother anyone else. Her settings and characters really tick the proper boxes for me, but I kept getting thrown out of the story by those "little things" that sometimes matter more than they should.

>3 quondame: Permission to re-read, ma'am, if that's what you want to do!

>4 alcottacre: See above

>5 Kristelh: Hmmm... a new name for me. Will investigate! Thanks.

I have a faint recollection of reading at least the first two Nevada Barr “Anna Pigeon” books, but that was pre-LibraryThing (and I’m a 15-year LTer), and so I’m going to start up again with Track of the Cat (Anna Pigeon #1).

Karen O

>7 klobrien2: I've read 4 of those, and might fit the next one in this month.

No Spoiler here in my long ago review
(which now inspires an overdue read again) -

Track of the Cat is the first of Nevada Barr's novels set in U.S. National Parks.
Not only is it a totally compelling story from the first pages, but violence is not a driving force.
Ranger Anna Pigeon may claim a place in your heart with her kindness, love for animals, and amazing strong spirit.
Cougars receive fair and intelligent treatment.

>6 laytonwoman3rd: Thanks, but somehow I don't think I'll have any trouble finding something new for this category. I even think there may be other Charlaine Harris mysteries I haven't read.

Anybody reading??

I've finished two selections for this month's challenge, The Paragon Hotel, by Lyndsay Faye, and The Blank Wall by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding. Enjoyed both. Holding was quite unknown to me. Next, I'm picking up Murder on the Red River, by Marcie R. Rendon.

>11 laytonwoman3rd: I pledge that I am going to get moving on The Track of the Cat this weekend, so help me, Nancy Pearl!

I LOVED the Marcie Rendon books! Great protagonist and setting (Minnesota). Hope you like this first of three (so far) Cash Blackbear books.

Karen O

Completed A Death of No Importance - Mariah Fredericks. It is historical fiction, mystery, the sleuth is a Lady's Maid. The setting is NYC during the Gilded Age.

I finished Track of the Cat by Nevada Barr. The first book of the Anna Pigeon series. I really enjoyed the reread (I read it for the first time years ago, so long ago that I really should call it a first read). I just love it when a book holds you fast at the end, so much so that you HAVE to keep reading.

Fun month of AAC!

Karen O

I finished Endangered Species by Nevada Barr today. That'll be a wrap for me for the month. I've started Louise Erdrich's Plague of Doves, which purportedly contains a murder mystery, although she isn't what I'd call a "crime writer". In any case, I'm unlikely to finish it in the next 26 hours, so...

Anybody else have anything to report?

Sure wish that TRACK OF THE CAT had been made into a movie!

>16 m.belljackson: Yes! That would be great. I wonder if any of the Anna Pigeon books have made it into film. Nope, couldn't find "Nevada Barr" (well, she helped with The National Parks: America's Best Idea but that is all I could find. Nothing for "Anna Pigeon." Bah! or as Nero Wolfe says, "Pfui!"

Karen O

>17 klobrien2: Barr's participation in that Ken Burns series on the National parks is what brought her books to my attention.

I will revert to this thread in time.

>17 klobrien2: >18 laytonwoman3rd:

When Nevada Barr did a book signing, with a very funny intro,
in Madison, Wisconsin, several years ago,
she enjoyed signing the book I bought for my student,
also named Nevada.

>20 m.belljackson: Very cool! Nevada Barr seems like she would be great to meet/have as a friend!

Karen O

Whilst I was seemingly out of the...uh...thing...oh yeah, the LibraryThing, I did finish a "Ladies of Crime" book: Ride the Pink Horse by Dorothy B. Hughes. This novel was published in 1946, apparently went out-of-print. In 2021 it was republished by Otto Penzler, as an entry in his "American Mystery Classics."

    

The story's about a Chicago gunsel who goes by the name Sailor. He had done a job for a fellow nicknamed Sen because he had been a U.S. Senator, a corrupt on. Sen welshed on Sailor. The gunsel pursues Sen to a New Mexico town a lot like Santa Fe, where he plans to confront Sen, confident he'll get paid (even though Sailor has jacked up the price). Complicating the action are two matters. It's the town's annual Fiesta that fills every hotel and restaurant, with crowds jamming the street. Sailor can't hardly get close to Sen, much less confront him. Moreover, a Chicago policeman called Mac (for MacIntyre) shows up, himself tailing Sen and, knowingly, trying to thwart Sailor.

In a striking departure from publishing practices in 1946, Hughes records all of Sailor's racism in a town teeming with Native Americans and hispanics.

The novel was adapted to film. 

>22 weird_O: You don't really say whether you liked it... I didn't get to it in September, but I have plans to read Hughes's In a Lonely Place sometime soon. It's included in the Library of America set of Women Crime Writers.