Mr. Bazalgette’s Agentwas published in 1888 and is said to be the first British novel to
feature a professional female detective.
Twenty-eight-year-old Miriam Lea, a
former actress, is a ‘lady of brains’ who applies for a job at Alfred
Bazalgette’s Inquiry Office in London.
Miriam is an ‘adventuress’
who longs to be successful in her new career, but when she sets off to the
diamond mines of South Africa to find a clerk accused of fraud, she’s acutely
aware this isn’t a job for a lady.
Mr. Bazalgette’s
Agent is a
fast-paced read. Miriam is independent and resourceful, and the novel gives a
good insight into how Victorian readers viewed private detection. The end made
me laugh out loud, although I don’t think this was the author’s intention.
When Miriam Lea falls on hard times, an advertisement calling for private agents catches her eye, and within weeks she finds herself in Mr Bazalgette's employ as a private detective, travelling on a train to Hamburg in pursuit of an audacious fraudster. What follows is a journey through some of the great cities of Europe - and eventually to South Africa - as Miss Lea attempts to find her man. Miriam Lea is only the third ever British professional female detective to appear in a work of crime fiction. Originally published in 1888, Mr Bazalgette's Agent presents a determined and…
Annette Kerner was Britain’s
most famous sleuth in the early 1950s; she called herself Mrs. Sherlock Holmes
and ran the Mayfair Detective Agency on Baker Street.
Her memoir was
ghost-written by an unnamed journalist, and it’s a rollicking and often
unbelievable read, from Annette’s recruitment by the Secret Service to how she
first became a private eye.
Annette’s tales of stolen
paintings, Cambridge shootings, Park Lane divorces, blackmail, and poisonings
are often far-fetched, and her memoir made me want to find out how much was
true. I eventually discovered that Mrs. Sherlock Holmes was not the person she
said she was.
A Suitable Job
for a Woman,
published in 1995, is an incredibly useful book in terms of the popular depiction
of female PIs versus the day-to-day reality of women in the industry.
Val
McDermid interviewed 34 PIs in Britain and the States, and while American PIs
were open and relaxed, British women were more wary. Thirty years later,
I had the same problem, and it took me a long time to earn the trust of my
interviewees.
Val anticipated
there would be more women working in private investigation in the future – and
while progress has been slow, around 30 percent of trainees in Britain are now
women. As one of her interviewees explains, it is "one
of the few jobs where women can exploit the fact that we’re second-class
citizens."
""But down these mean streets must go a man who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished or afraid."" When Raymond Chandler wrote these words in his classic The Simple Art of Murder, he drew a blueprint for the male private eyes who descend from Philip Marlowe to populate the world of crime fiction. But what if the private eye is a woman? And what if she is not a character in a novel but a real, working investigator testing not only the meanness but the absurdity of life on seamy streets? Who will tell her story?
The female private detective has been a staple of popular culture for 150 years, from Victorian lady sleuths to ‘busy-body spinsters’ and gun-toting modern PIs. But what about the real-life women behind the fictional tales – what crimes did they solve, and where are their stories?
In Private Inquiries, Caitlin Davies traces the history of the UK’s female investigators from the 1850s to the present day. Women like Victorian inquiry agent Antonia Moser, the first woman to open her own agency; and Liverpool sleuth Zena Scott-Archer, the first woman president of the World Association of Detectives. Caitlin also follows in the footsteps of her subjects, training to become a PI, and meeting modern investigators to find out the reality behind the fictional image.
