Regular readers will know I have a bit of a weakness for the vintage crime put out by the British Library. Haven't succumbed to a subscription yet, but they are trying hard in my Facebook feed,
One of my favourite Golden Age authors is E C R Lorac, in real life Edith Caroline Rivett. As you can see as well as reversing one of her names, Carol, for her pseudonym she also adopted the use of initials, a device often used by female writers and still being done today, particularly in the crime genre. The general feeling seems to be that this widens the prospective audience. Women will apparently read a crime novel by a man, but a man read a woman author? Not so much.
It's a matter for discussion, and one that is not new. The most recent Lorac I read was Death of an Author in which the debate over whether a critic/reader can tell whether a book has been written by a man or woman forms a keystone of the plot. I enjoyed it - and it shows that the discussion has been around a long time - and it is probably not going away anytime soon.
I'm not entirely sure where I am going with this post except to flag up something interesting.
Although there are a great many females being just as gory and twisty as their male counterparts is there an implicit assumption that crime is a male thing?
One event I will be interested in is the first short list for the new cosy crime category in the CWA Dagger awards which makes its appearance for the first time next year. It is a genre with a lot of women writers and writing well too. Certainly worthy of a dagger. So - is there a possibility the the CWA might have an all female short list for this one?
An intriguing idea.
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