Murder by the Book?: Feminism and the Crime Novel

by Sally R. Munt

A consummate and enjoyable study of the blossoming feminist crime novel in Britain and the United States.

Genres: Nonfiction, Crime

Paperback

First published September 8, 1994

About the author

Sally Rowena Munt, DPhil. is Professor and Director of the Sussex Centre for Cultural Studies. She has published widely on cultures of otherness and social justice, and is the author of Queer Attachments: The Cultural Politics of Shame (Ashgate 2007).

Reviews

[Len · Rating 4 out of 5]

The volume reads as a collection of academic articles rather than one continuous study of a subject, and that lessens its impact. The first summarizes the mainstream women crime writers, and for many of them it is the only mention they get in the book. The second looks at liberal feminist writers and analyses such authors as Sara Paretsky, Amanda Cross and Sue Grafton, with briefer accounts of Liza Cody, Emma Tennant, Joan Smith and Barbara Crossley. The third discusses socialist feminist crime fiction with such authors as Valerie Miner, Hannah Wakefield, Gillian Slovo, Val McDermid, and Rosie Scott. Race politics occupies the fourth and includes Dolores Komo, Rosa Guy, Nikki Baker, Eleanor Taylor Bland, Barbara Neely, Elizabeth Bowyers, and Sarah Dreher. The fifth analyses lesbian crime fiction through novels by M.F. Beal, Vicki P. McConnell, Barbara Wilson, Sarah Dreher, Katherine V. Forrest and Mary WingsMary Wings. The sixth considers the use of psychoanalysis in feminist crime fiction mainly in novels by Gillian Slovo and Elsa Lewin. Chapter seven discusses postmodernism and the work of Sarah Schulman. Chapter eight is a short and very well written summary conclusion.

The whole is a very thought provoking book and persuades the reader to pursue the original novels. While I have read quite a few of the authors mentioned in the first chapter many of the others are new to me and deserve reading – if I can find copies available in the UK.

The author's style can be a little academically intimidating at times and occasionally I did think I was listening to a Star Trek engineer's techno-babble in my mind – but I got over it. She loves her alliterations. In fact, there are so many examples that I started compiling a list of favourites. My top two were: “friendly, flirtatious and fatherly Captain Felix Frayne of the police (a firmly fictional figure)” and “gourmet dinners ingurgitated with gormandizing gratification.” I will adopt one of the author's favourite words and recommend her hermeneutic approach to everyone interested in crime fiction.

[Cloud · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm at page 100 and I can already tell this is going to be a Mess to read and study on.
The author goes from detective novel to hard-boiled to thriller without putting each sub-genre into separate sections, without headings sub-headings, nothing.
Another instance of narrative insanity: in the /same/ paragraph she talks about different authors, she lists one author's works, writes 3 lines commentary about their writing style, then start talking about another author in-depth. In the same paragraph!
The subtitle is literally "feminism and the crime novel" but the author seems to have a lax definition of novel since she shifts from literary works to television series, back then to literature, then shifts again to radio plays or movies, and so on and so forth. All this without any form of boundary whatsoever, no headings or different paragrahs.
I cannot believe I paid money for this book.

[Elena · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a great reading for crime fiction theory, but it was published in 1994, so some ideas and theories are a bit outdated. But anyways, a must-read for anyone interested in feminism and crime fiction.