Alan Lowe is currently in his final year for a Degree in American Studies from Manchester Metropolitan University. One subject that this literate British gent is enjoying is American Genre Literature, which has reintroduced him to Raymond Chandler, an author he read in his youth. He shared an essay comparing two female detectives often referred to as hardboiled which I found thought-provoking and now share with you. He invites you to give him direct feedback about his essay, at alan@jandalowe.fsnet.co.uk

The Best Hardboiled Female

Mystery author Jeremiah Healy suggests: "the rule of male heroes can simply be abandoned when women take up private eye writing, but because of the way the genre functions, such iconic elements are never fully erased in the mind of the writers and readers. The practice of genre relies on remembering the rules, even when they are bent; and when women take up the subjective position offered by the detective novel, their writings always bear at least traces of differences, of their departure from previous practices in masculine tradition."

With that in mind, I considered the question: To what extent do the novels of Sara Paretsky and/or Paula Woods adhere to this assertion? And how do they utilise or subvert the work of male writers?

It is strange that while Paretsky's main character, V.I. Warshawski [http://www.thrillingdetective.com/warshawski.html], is a private eye and that Wood's main character, Charlotte Justice [http://www.woodsontheweb.com/] is an actual policewoman, and a black one at that, it is Justice who has all the hallmarks of a Phillip Marlowe or Sam Spade whilst Warshawski does not.

This not only comes over in the characters but also in the style of writing. While Woods is recognisable as of the same genre as Hammett or Chandler, Paretsky certainly is not. True she makes little bows to them with lines such as "He topped five foot eight by a good nine inches," but her style is much more feminine and the plot contains more feminine motives than any male writer of the genre. This would be fine but her book seems more interested in social justice and correcting sexual bias than actually solving the murder or giving us a believable character.

Warshawski is like no other woman in that she is totally convinced at all times that her ideas and thinking are correct, she needs no reassurance from anyone, male or female, except perhaps her dead mother. This might have worked had the character been a lesbian, but because she is not she continually has to explain to the reader and herself why she will not seek help from her boyfriend even though he is in an ideal position to give that help. As a lesbian, the sexual aspect simply would not have come into her decision whether to ask for help or not. In fairness, Paretsky herself said that originally she found herself trying to create a character that was aping the Raymond Chandler tradition until she realised what she really wanted to do was to create a woman who like herself was trying to compete in a male field. In Warshawski however what we get is not a hard-boiled detective but a character more concerned with life's social problems than anything else.

Whether it is possible to have an exact "tails" to Marlowe's "heads" is debatable but Warshawski comes nowhere near that idea. As Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wrote in the New York Times, "the poor, the weak, the old, the female, the single and the black tend to be the good, and the rich, the strong, the middle-aged, the married and the WASPish are likely to be evil." This line is more political than any earlier novel of the genre had ever been and as such makes it difficult, if not impossible to say that this novel is even part of the genre it is placed in.

Because of the style of writing and the characteristics given to Warshawski, the reader is never likely to take the character to their heart as they do with Marlowe with all his admitted weaknesses. In this he mirrors us readers in many ways while Warshawski simply does not. She is a creation, nothing more, with no soul and no traits that are likely to endear us to her, apart from walking the dogs and even then she seems to do as a chore rather than to give and receive pleasure. It is for these reasons that Marlowe can be and is viewed in a favourable light by many women, while Warshawski is hardly likely to be viewed as a favourable catch, which even her creator seems to accept.

Justice on the other hand is totally believable with her family problems and her sexual harassment troubles at work and, unlike Partesky, Woods is only too happy to write with the style of Chandler with lots of brilliant "one liners" and asides to the reader. Her comment that "He'd lost a small child, about 30lbs" is so typically Chandler as to make us wonder if it actually was Chandler.

Paretsky doesn't seem to be writing in the genre at all, merely using a private eye to push her political ideas. This is not what the original genre was about at all. True, there are some political and social points made by earlier writers such as Chandler but they were very much the sub plot not as in Paretsky's case the main theme. Apparently, this was not the case in the early novels, which were more "gritty" in the words of one reviewer. It is only in later novels that her distaste for house cleaning, dishwashing and bill paying are brought to the reader's notice. She also tells us she hates exercising but it beats dieting. Whether this added information about the character is useful is doubtful. Chandler and his fellow writers paid no great attention to their creations' past lives or to their present home lives unless it was particularly relevant to the story.

In this Woods does the same. We get to know a lot about Justice, but it is always relevant and does not destroy the flow of the story as it sometimes does with Paretsky. To counter the problem of Justice being a member of a Police Department Woods, by making her Black and a woman, allows us to view her as an outsider within the Department and more like Marlowe than Warshawski can ever be. With her Black background it is easier to accept her independence. Black women tend to be the heads of family households, more so than in white families, so she is acceptable as an independent woman who can accept assistance from others, even men, without losing her forceful characteristics. The Matriarchal head of a Black household will accept male help without it threatening her dominant position.

Warshawski on the other hand constantly refuses male assistance on the grounds it will undermine her position as an independent woman. With Woods one can forget this is a woman writer so easily does she slip into the accepted functions of the genre. She obeys most of the rules, which is not the case with Paretsky. Having said that, Woods character is obviously, from her gender and colour different from what as gone before, but it does not distract the reader from understanding they are reading the same genre as Hammett and Chandler, this is definitely not the case with Paretsky who not only bends the rules but also breaks them unashamedly. Woods, whilst placing her character in the Police Department does not fall into the trap of making this a police procedural novel, the opposite in fact, she manages to allow her policewoman to run the case almost like a private eye. Paretsky is not clear what kind of novel she has written, is it a hard-boiled detective novel? Or is it an attempt at bringing social problems into it whist trying to stay within the genre? In either case she fails, it is not a straight detective novel and its attempt to bring in social problems just distracts the reader.

As for the styles of writing at has to be agreed that Paretsky appears to have the better skills while Woods allows the novel to simply flow and be enjoyed for what it is. One feels that Woods is writing what she is good at while Paretsky would be better employed in the genre she is obviously drawn to, the social justice novel of writers such as Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley, Booker Prize winner Graham Swift or National Book Award winner Robert Stone. What prevented her from joining this format before or since would appear to be the knowledge that detective novels tend to sell more than even the books by the authors previously mentioned. It may not have been simply for the money this path was chosen but perhaps because she could get a social justice message across to a different as well as larger market. At first it may seem strange that only one novel has reached the screen but the very fact that there is no definitive target audience could well be the reason. Hollywood likes "sure fire" winners not good outside bets. In 1998 she did write a book, Ghost Country, about her concerns for the urban homeless that was not a mystery, nor did it contain the character Warshawski. It was only a minor success and she returned to her original format the following year with Hard Time, another Warshawski novel proving, if nothing else that she had chosen the right path if getting her social message across was her main concern. There is nothing wrong with what she does or the way in which she writes. The cause she espouses is a noble one but one has to asked - is it really part of the genre she is supposedly following? The answer undoubtedly is "No".

Woods does seem to have managed an extremely difficult task by creating a character so different from those that have gone before but also one that slips easily into the accepted style of the genre. The gender of the character Justice could quite easily be changed to a male character without many changes having to be made to the text and Woods' style of writing bears a strong resemblance to the male writers who have gone before with its hard hitting metaphors and language. She has stuck to the formula in a way that Paretsky has not and in a way that will attract male readers, which Paretsky certainly does not. This is not feminist writing; this is hard hitting writing that all fans of the genre will recognise. Has she stuck too closely to the formula? Should she have tried to get closer to the Paretsky style and made some real social comment? Perhaps, but would that have been in the spirit of the genre she had chosen to write in? At what point does one genre become part of another? A difficult question to answer.

Finally can either book be classed as true literature in the classical sense? The first reaction to that question is a definite "No". They both lack the true depth of a Faulkner, Hemmingway or such but that does not mean they are "Pulp Fiction" in the same way as Archer, Cookson, etc. They both have too much depth and style to fall into that category. Paretsky because she has obviously mastered the craft of writing an intricate novel with something worthwhile to say and Woods, because just like Chandler you can open her book at any page and find a turn of phrase that will please you in one way or another.

Woods uses films and songs as metaphors in the text and explores the discrimination and exploitation of an earlier time and how it has evolved. She shows Los Angeles for what it is, an extremely segregated city, but unlike Paretsky these themes and ideas do not get in the way of the main thrust of the story, they enhance it. By making her a widow who has also lost a child, Woods allows us to view her as feminine even when she is dealing with a large bodyguard who calls her "Bitch." The swift elbow in the gut and the high heel on the instep can be viewed as just something she finds necessary for that particular moment and not somehow a penchant for violence for its own sake.

In conclusion, Paretsky does not really use the work of male writers at all, except in the very broadest sense in that her main character is a private eye. She utilises this fact in a way that has no recognisable similarity to the male writers who have gone before. It is merely a vehicle for her social conscience.

On the other hand, Woods utilises virtually all the ideas of the genre without subverting it in any way despite a change of sex for the main character and as such is a genuine heir to the line of hard-boiled writers that have gone before her. She gives us a character every bit as memorable as Marlowe by, as she says herself, "Making her as functional, or perhaps dysfunctional, as everyone else." Justice will continue to seek justice, a bad pun it is true, but totally in tune with the genre.