Female Detectives in Early Crime Fiction:1841-1920

Jamie Sturgeon, a book dealer who has over the years supplied me not only with plenty of books but also with a good deal of interesting information about authors and their work, has kindly introduced me to a new book by Ashley Bowden, Female Detectives in Early Crime Fiction: 1841-1920: A Survey.

I thought I knew quite a bit about this subject until I read this book. I expected to see names like Dora Myrl, Judith Lee, Florence Cusack, Dorcas Dene, and Hagar Stanley, and I was not disappointed. But this valuable reference work contains a lot of information with which I wasn't familiar. Ashley Bowden has been reading and researching in this field for decades, and the result is a book which adds to our stock of knowledge in a concise and reader-friendly way.

Let me give just one example. I'd never thought of R.D. Blackmore, author of Lorna Doone, as a crime writer. However, eight years after publishing the one book by which he is remembered today, he was responsible for Erema, or My Father's Sin. The female detective in question is Erema Castlewood. Ashley Bowden gives us a short synopsis of the plot, but his verdict is not encouraging. Nor is the review he quotes from the Spectator: 'we think it to be unworthy of Mr Blackmore's talents.' Oh dear. I won't be rushing to read that one. But it's very useful to have the benefit of Ashley Bowden's view of the story as well as the review.

There are many good illustrations, and also a wealth of appendices, as well as (importantly) indexes. I suspect that I'll be consulting this book regularly in the future. There are a number of stories discussed here that I'd like to read, and several that sound as though they deserve to be back in print. So my thanks, once again, to Jamie as well as to Ashley Bowden.