A history of women in mystery

Young Chang

When Pamela Briggs met private investigator V.I. Warshawski for the

first time in the pages of Sara Paretsky’s novels, it was as if she had

found what she had been wanting all her life.

“I will never forget that moment,” the filmmaker said. “I couldn’t

believe that a writer had the courage and guts to create such a

character.”

A fan of female leads in detective fiction, Briggs is the co-producer

and director of “Women of Mystery,” a documentary featuring mystery

writers Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky, to be screened

Thursday at the Newport Beach Central Library. The rising presence of

women writers and women detectives in the genre of mystery writing is

important, said Briggs, who will be at the event.

“These detectives have made me braver, and they’re amazing role

models,” she explained. “I may not be ready to go through abandoned

buildings and dark alleys and all, but their kind of determination to

seek the truth and the courage to speak their mind -- that’s given me a

lot of courage.”

The 53-minute screening launches a three-program series, co-sponsored

by the California Center for the Book, about the art of detective

fiction. A special author appearance by Wendy Hornsby and a book

discussion about mystery fiction written by Grafton, Paretsky and Muller

are also part of the series.

“They really are the three writers who created the female private

investigator,” Briggs said. “Up to that moment, there had been female

detectives that had worked with males, or [were] assistants, but nobody

wrote about female detectives.”

Dilys Winn, the first mystery specialty bookseller and founder of New

York’s Murder Ink, said the number of women mystery writers and female

heroines has increased in the past 50 years. In the late 1920s, English

women such as Agatha Christie dominated the genre. The women’s movement

started about 30 years later and helped inspire female writers in America

to write about strong women, said Winn, after whom The Dilys Award was

named. Presented by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Assn., the award

honors the most enjoyable new mystery title every year.

Gothic and sensation fiction, which are seen as precursors to the

crime novel, were written mainly by women in the 18th and 19th centuries

even before Edgar Allen Poe or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle came onto the

scene, Briggs said. Mary Elizabeth Braddon, who wrote the sensation novel

“Lady Audley’s Secret,” and Ann Radcliffe, author of “The Mysteries of

Udolpho,” are two principal figures.

“There’s this amazing history of women writing crime novels,” Briggs

said.

Today, Grafton, Paretsky and Muller are considered to be the forces

changing detective fiction. They each raise questions about crime and

justice, each focusing on a different type of social issue, Briggs said.

“If you are selective about the books that you read, I think you can

get a clear, personalized view about what’s going on in the country,” she

added. “I’ve heard people say that with crime novels, there are people

who prefer to read detective crime novels before they go to a new city,

instead of reading travel books.”

Winn added that while the genre of science fiction predicts the

future, mysteries tell of the world exactly as it is.

Lately, a popular plot device is using characters who are abused

children, she said.

“The other thing you’re getting is a lot if lesbian mysteries -- some

of them are quite wonderful. That certainly is a new direction because

what you’re having are lesbians as heroines,” Winn said.

Briggs, as a filmmaker, said she wanted to document current

developments in detective fiction, particularly with Grafton, Muller and

Paretsky.

“Many [writers] have been forgotten,” she said. “That’s another

important reason for making the film -- I don’t want them to run the risk

of disappearing into forgotten history.”

FYI

WHAT: “Women of Mystery”

WHEN: 7 p.m. March 1

WHERE: Newport Beach Central Library, 1000 Avocado Ave.

COST: Free

CALL: (949) 717-3801, also for information on other series events.