The Ladies of PI Fiction
If you close your eyes and picture a hardboiled private investigator, I’m guessing it’s a dude. Maybe a grizzled silver fox in a trench coat, Humphrey Bogart style. Or a well-coifed Colin Farrell driving around Los Angeles in a vintage Chevy Stingray. While Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Malone, and Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski have achieved cultural icon status, fictional female PIs don’t tend to get as much attention. That’s a shame.
When I wrote Kate Myles, the protagonist of my novel, BURN THIS NIGHT, private investigative work felt like a natural fit for her character. Kate is a resilient (if self-loathing) single mother, who lost her police career after an accident led to a pain pill addiction.
I set out to write a smart independent woman who solves crimes and occasionally stumbles along the way. To me, characters are more interesting when they’re full of contradictions. Kate is smart, but has terrible ADHD. She’s a loving mother, but she’s made serious mistakes. She knows who she is, but life has caused her to fundamentally re-examine things more than once. A fictional PI gig fits Kate and similar characters, because they get to be competent but function outside the institutional confines you see in a police procedurals. That lack of structure brings their flaws and quirks to the surface, but also lets their strengths shine.
During my writing journey, I made a point of seeking out great female PI characters. Here are some of my favorites:
Cass Raines by Tracy Clark
Former cop, Cass Raines has been through the ringer. She was a dedicated Chicago police officer, until an over eager colleague startled an armed criminal, who opened fire. Cass was hit in the chest and ended up killing the young man who shot her.
When we first meet Cass in BROKEN PLACES, she has physically recovered and started working as a PI. At the same time, she is haunted by having taken a life. Cass is strong and independent, but emotionally relies on her friend, Father Heaton, a priest who mentored her when she was a girl after her mother died and her father skipped town.
So, imagine her shock when father Heaten is murdered in his church along with a teen. To make matters worse, a lazy police detective slaps on a simplistic explanation for the crime that Cass doesn’t buy.
Cass is impossible not to like, and more importantly, believe as a character. She’s tough but feels things deeply and thanklessly risks her life for those she cares about. She’s a heroine you will cheer for want to read on for her next adventure.
Billy Levine by Kimberly G. Giarratano
Billy Levine is one of the most charming and effortlessly original heroines you’re going to encounter in today’s crime fiction. A young Jewish woman in her twenties, Billy’s life is upended when her mother is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. Billy has to find a way to make a living that gives her the flexibility she needs to care for a mentally declining loved one. To make matters worse, Billy is burdened with the knowledge that she could develop the same debilitating condition in middle age. That knowledge gives her an understandable, if tragic, fear of commitment.
To balance her very adult responsibilities, Billy starts working as a PI under her grandfather’s license. When we first meet Billy in DEATH OF A DANCING QUEEN, a rich deadbeat offers her money to find his missing girlfriend. Billy is soon pulled into a complex mystery involving organized crime, a giant diamond, and a dead dancer. The plot further thickens when her handsome ex-boyfriend, a low-grade mobster who “oozes sex,” reenters the picture.
Despite everything she’s dealing with, Billy is a joy to read. She’s down-to-earth, believable, and always funny.
Annie McIntyre by Samantha Jayne Allen
Like Billy Levine, Annie McIntyre is young, restless, and trying to carve out a place for herself. We first meet her in PAY DIRT ROAD, which won the Tony Hillerman Prize for best first mystery set in the Southwest. After graduating from college, Annie returns to the dysfunctional Texas town where she grew up. Angsty and rudderless, Annie feels uncomfortable in her hometown – in part because a traumatic high school experience. In need of work, she takes a job waitressing and another gig doing clerical work at her grandfather’s PI firm. When another waitress from the diner goes missing and is later found dead, Annie is sucked into the case and starts to find herself and her purpose as she unravels the mystery.
Even when Annie’s feeling lost and unmoored, she has a firm sense of who she is and a solid moral compass. She will appeal to anyone who’s ever been young and felt unmoored or driven by a need to correct a serious wrong.
Great, and interesting guest post! Thanks so much for sharing. :-)
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