Women Detectives Site created by Bob Schneider. Contact me at speedymystery@yahoo.com
Visit my main website---SpeedyMystery---for other items of interest to fans of mystery and detective fiction.
Fictional Female PI's Time Chart
My Definition of a Female PI, Private Investigator, Private Eye, Private Detective, Private Enquiry Agent:
A woman who investigates crimes, apparent crimes, mysterious circumstances/events on at least a semi-regular basis while seeking compensation for her efforts but does not currently work for a government agency, body, group or organization. In short, not a policewoman nor an amateur sleuth but a women who tries to earn a living by investigating crimes outside of government employment.
TIME CHART
Year Character Author
1864 Mrs G(ladding?) Adrew W Forrester Jr Location: ?
Lone/Agent/Owner: ?
Name of agency: ?
Type: ?
Comments: Appeared in The Female Detective and The Unkown Weapon. Had a woman assistant.
1882 Denver Doll Edwin L Wheeler
Location: American West
Lone/Agent/Owner: ?
Name of agency: ?
Type: Medium Boiled
Comments: Sort of a Dime Novel combo of Annie Oakley & Dale Evans. Appeared in 4 stories in Beadle's Half-Dime Library in 1882-83. Known as "The Detective Queen". Author also created "Deadwood Dick" character.
1883 Clarice Dyke Harry Rockwood (aka Ernest Avon Young, Donald J McKenzie)
Location: Boston
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency: ?
Type: Softboiled
Comments: Works for/with husband, Donald Dyke.
1886 Kate Edwards (Goelet?) Harlan P Halsey (aka "Old Sleuth", Tony Pastor, Judson R Taylor)
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of agency: ?
Type: Mediumboiled
Comments: "Lady Kate, the Dashing Female Detective" seems to be a Dime-Novel version of Honey West who, unlike Honey, manages to keep her clothes on.
1889 Hilda Serene Albert W. Aiken
Location:
Lone/Agent/Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments: 25 year old detective appeared in "The Actress Detective: Or, The Invisible Hand: The Romance of an Implacable Mission".
1891 Maggie Everett Harlan P Halsey? (aka "Old Sleuth", Tony Pastor, Judson R Taylor)
Location: ?
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of agency: Badger & Co
Type: ?
Comments: ?
1892 Laura Keen C. Little
Location: American West?
Lone/Agent/ Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: Appeared in Laura Keen, the Queen of Detectives per Michele B Slung in Crime on Her Mind (1975).
Appears to be a Dime-novel type heroine maybe similar to Denver Doll? (see above).
1892 Dorcas Dene (nee Lester) George R Sims
Location: England
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent/Owner
Name of Agency: ?
Type: softboiled
Comments: Her dramatist friend, Mr Saxon, acts as her Watson per CJ Rzepka. Retired actress begins working for her neighbor's detective agency before eventually taking it over. Dorcas has to earn living to support her family because artist husband, Paul Dene, has become blind. Household also consists of Dorcas's mother (Mrs Lester) and a bulldog named Toddlekins. Storytelling style and plotlines are similar to the Loveday Brooke stories by C L Pirkis (see below). Stories often involve secret marriages, mistaken identity, lunatic asylums and stolen inheritances. Men behaving badly are ubiquitious.
1894 Loveday Brooke Catherine Louisa Pirkis
Location: London
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency: Lynch Court Detective Agency?
Type: Softboiled
Comments: Upper class woman falls on hard times, works as a PI to earn a living. Boss is Ebenezer Dyer.
Storytelling style and plotlines are similar to the Dorcas Dene stories by George R Sims (see above). Main
difference between Loveday and Dorcas is that at the end of a case Dorcas returns to a loving household
while Loveday seems to have no friends or relatives she can turn to for solice or company.
1894 Coralie Urquhart M(ary) E(lizaeth) Braddon (aka Mrs John Maxwell)
Location:
Lone/Agent/Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments: Appeared in Thou Art the Man. Author had written Lady Audley's Secret in 1862.
1894 "The Squirrel"? Charleton Savage (aka Carlton Strange)
Location: ?
Lone/Agent/Owner: ?
Name of Agency: ?
Type: Softboiled?
Comments: Appeared in The Beech Court Mystery. She is the daughter of a poacher?
1894 Annie Cory Mrs George Corbett (aka Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett)
Location: ?
Lone/Agent/Owner: ?
Name of Agency: ?
Type: ?
Comments: Appeared in When the Sea Gives Up Its Dead. Author also wrote a book of ss titled Adventures of a Lady Detective in 1890 but scant info exists. Is Annie Cory the "Lady Detective"? Or is it Bell White (who works for/with Robert "Bob" White) from Secrets of a Private Inquiry Office? (1890). Detects alongside her father per
Michele B. Slung's reading of Victorian Detective Fiction (1966).
1895 Rose Cortenay Milton Danvers (aka J Edmond Long)
Location: England
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency: ?
Type: ?
Comments: Appears in The Fatal Finger Mark, Rose Cortenay's First Case (1895) as an agent of the agency
owned by Robert Spicer as per CJ Rzepka.
1895 Mignon Lawrence Albert W. Aiken
Location: American West
Lone/Agent/Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type: Hardboiled?
Comments: Former NYC policewoman detects out West under the guise of being a barber? Partner is Joe Phoenix. Appeared in "The Female-Barber Detective: Or, Joe Phenix in Silver City".
1895 Caroline "Cad" Metti Harlan P. Halsey
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency: ?
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: Appeared in "Cad Metti: The Female Detective Strategist: Or, Dudie Dunne, Again in the Field" and possibly two other stories. Oscar Woodford "Dudie" Dunne is Cad's boss/partner. Cad is a beautiful Italian-American dark-haired young woman who can sing, dance, fence, wrestle and shoot with great expertise. She, like her boss, is a master of disguise (what top-notch detective of that era wasn't) and can tail/follow anyone, anytime without being noticed. She also enjoys a good fight and doesn't shy away from administering a severe beating (with her trusty small billy club) to any criminal who deserves it. Cad earns her moniker of "Detective Strategist" mainly by doing the thinking for her boss/partner, Dudie Dunne, on those occasions when Dudie falls prey to a pretty woman of questionable character. The Dudie Dunne character almost shouts out for a deeper analysis than I am qualified to offer. Although he is slight of build, he is quite athletic, adept at disguises and expert at tailing suspects. Both Dudie (the nickname refers to his penchant for dressing like a dude) and Cad often assume the guise of the opposite sex, even when the plot doesn't really call for such actions. Cad and Dudie sometimes even disguise themselves as each other, but, as mentioned above, this cross-dressing doesn't serve to further the plot in any appreciable way. "Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist...,etc." is a Dime-novel, pot-boiler describing the detectives efforts to capture a gang of master criminals who are about to unleash a world-wide counterfeiting scheme. These so-called mastermind criminals were able to somehow organize a sophisticated international plot of great complexity, yet, due mainly to their own stupidity, become easy prey to a couple of NYC detectives who seem to like to cross-dress as much as they like to fight crime. Other than some interesting descriptions of the Sheepshead Bay--Coney Island sections of Brooklyn, this is a poorly written adventure story with little true detection on display.
1898 Lois Cayley Grant Allen
Location: England, Europe, Asia
Lone/Agent/Owner: ?
Name of Agency: ?
Type: Soft?
Comments: Really more Adventuress than Detective as indicated by title of book she appears in, Miss Cayley's Adventures. She is 21, dark complexion, eyes & hair.
1899 Florence Cusak L T Meade & R Eustace
Location: England?
Lone/Agent/Owner: ?
Name of Agency: ?
Type: Soft?
Comments: Dark blue eyes & raven hair. Appears in 4 stories in Harmsworth Magazine. Narrator/friend is
Dr Lonsdale. The story I read tries to mimic a Sherlock Holmes-type adventure.
1899 Mrs Mollie Delamere Beatrice Heron-Maxwell
Location: London?
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent?
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments: A widow who is a part time journalist and an appraiser/agent for a pearl merchant. Apparently Mollie foils crimes while working for the pearl merchant? per Michele B Slung in Crime on Her Mind (1975).
1900 Dora Myrl M(atthias) McDonnell Bodkin
Location: London?
Lone/Agent/Owner: Lone
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments:
1900 Hilda Wade Grant Allen
Location: ?
Lone/Agent/Owner: ?
Name of Agency: ?
Type: ?
Comments: Apparently was a nurse who happens to solve mysteries so probably not eligible for this list.
Perhaps Mary Roberts Rinehart read these stories and named her nurse detective, Hilda Adams, after
Grant Allen's protaganist? Hilda Adams (Miss Pinkerton) is not eligible for this list because she is an
undercover police detective (and a nurse), not a PI. Note on the finances of Rinehart's Hilda Adams: Since she usually was paid both by the police and the families into whose home her boss secretly plants her when working on a case (and when in-between cases she could always find nurse-related employment) she must have made a nice living throughout her long career.
1903? Bella Thorn Tom Gallon
Location: London?
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency: Secretarial Supply Syndicate, Ltd.
Type: Soft?
Comments: Probably more an amateur sleuth/typist than a PI per my reading of Michele B Slung's comments in Crime on Her Mind (1975).
1904 Mademoiselle Lucie Harlan P. Halsey
Location:
Lone/Agent/Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments: Appeared in "Mademoiselle Lucie, the French Lady Detective". Jerry Mack is her male partner.
1906 Frances Baird R(eginald) W(right) Kauffman
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent /Owner: Agent
Name of Agency: Watkins Private Detective Agency
Type: ?
Comments: Appeared in Miss Frances Baird, Detective: A Passage from her Memoirs (1906).
1909 Alice Montgomery Francis W Doughty
Location: ?
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency: Old & Young King Brady
Type: ?
Comments: ?
1909? (or 1917) Millicent Newberry Jeanette Lee (aka Barbour Perry)
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent then Owner
Name of Agency: Tom Corbin's Agency, then her own
Type: soft
Comments: Former seamstress, tiny with grey hair & eyes. Colleen Barnett in Mystery Women says appeareed in 3 books The Green Jacket (1917), The Mysterious Office (1922) & Dead Right (1925) but not in Simeon
Tetlow's Shadow (1909).
1911 Ida Lee Marie Conner Leighton
Location: England?
Lone/Agent/Owner:
Name of Agency: ?
Type: ?
Comments: Appeared in The Bride of Dutton Market.
1914 Madelyn Mack Hugh C Weir
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent then Owner then Lone
Name of Agency:
Type: softboiled?
Comments: Started as assistant house detective for the Niegel Dry Goods store then becomes owner of a large agency on Fifth Avenue. Housekeeper was Susan Bolton. Reporter Nora Noraker was her narrator. She went to college and modeled herself on Sherlock Holmes per Colleen Barnett in Mystery Women. Appeared in Miss Madelyn Mack, Detective (1914). Stories are very reminiscent of Doyle's detective stories though not quite as good. Just like Holmes, Madelyn turns to a drug, of sorts, when depressed or bored---Cola berries?? She is so successful in her detecting exploits that at one point she owns an agency employing several "agents" and a secretary/receptionist and a second home---a country house located north of NYC overlooking the Hudson River.
Eventually she becomes wealthy enough to downsize her agency and work part time solving crimes that interest
her. The one story I read was entertaining but unfairly-clued.
1915 Violet Strange Anna Katherine Green (Roelphs)
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency:
Type: softboiled
Comments: Teenage heiress secretly works as PI to raise cash to help estranged (by father) older sister.
Appeared in The Golden Slipper & Other Problems for Violet Strange (1915). Several of the stories feature
puzzling plots with satisfying solutions. These stories are somewhat more easily approached by modern readers compared to the author's Gryce/Butterworth works.
1916 Clare Kendall Arthur B Reeve
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency:
Type: softboiled?
Comments: Appeared in a Craig Kennedy story "The Ear in the Wall" as the owner of a detective agency
specializing in helping women. Maybe a precursor to Dol Bonner's relationship with Nero Wolfe? Clare is described as a dark-haired, grey-eyed, not-unattractive, intelligent woman who had started out as an operative for one of the large NYC detective agencies and eventually opened her own agency. Like Reeve's main detective, Craig Kennedy, and his other detective/adventuress creation Constance Dunlap (see below), Clare seems to spend much of her time fighting against or dealing with the pervasive corruption created by the Tammany Hall political machine which dominated NYC from roughly 1840 to 1930. Clare apparently also worked closely with the suffragette movement.
1916 Molly Morganthau Babbits Geraldine Bonner
Location:
Lone/Agent/Owner: Lone
Name of Agency:
Type: softboiled
Comments: Former department store worker and switchboard operator turned part time sleuth. Sometimes worked with reporter/husband "Soapy" Babbits. Colleen Barnett in Mystery Women believes Molly was the first blue collar worker who became a female detective although because she may not have seeked payment for her services she is probably ineligible for this list. Appeared in The Girl at Central (1915), The Black Eagle Mystery (1916), and Miss Maitland, Private Secretary (1919).
1916 Constance Dunlap Arthur B Reeve
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner?
Name of Agency:
Type: mediumboiled?
Comments: Housewife then widow then adventuress then criminal then detective? Appeared in Constance Dunlap, Woman Detective (1913?). Stories are written in the same overwrought melodramatic style as Reeve's
Craig Kenney stories. New (at the time) inventions, such as fish-eye lenses, are often showcased in the stories.
Municipal corruption seems endemic.
1917 Evelyn Temple Ronald Gorell Barnes (aka Lord Gorell)
Location:
Lone/Agent/ Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments: Scientific detective? Michele B Slung labels her as an amateur sleuth so probably ineligible for this list.
1918 Solange Fontaine (Mrs) F(ryniwyd Wynifried Margaret) Tennyson Jesse (Harwood)
Location: France
Lone/Agent/Owner: Lone
Name of Agency: ?
Type: Softboiled (but does sometimes carry a gun)
Comments: I've only read one story. Solange seems to accept payment for her services so I believe she should be on this list. According to Michael Grost there is an uncollected group of short stories from 1918, a second group of stories collected and published in 1929 called The Solange Stories, an uncollected story from 1930 and a novel, A Pin to See the Peepshow from 1934. The stories seem to be well written with coherent plots and well developed characters. Mike Grost compares Jess's style to that of Somerset Maughams's. Solange claims to have the ability to sense the presence of evil.
1919? Lucille Dare Marie Connor Leighton
Location: London?
Lone/Agent/Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments: Michele B Slung in Crime on Her Mind (1975) notes that Lucille is a mistress of disguise and has
been involved in many cases, most are unrecorded.
1923 Miss Balmy Rymal Arthur Stringer
Location: US?
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency: Security Alliance
Type:
Comments: Michele B Slung in Crime on Her Mind (1975) suggests that the main client of the agency Balmy
works for is the Jewleler's Protective Union.
1923 Sylvia Shale Mrs Sydney Groom
Location: NY
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency:
Type: softboiled?
Comments:
1927 Kitty Climpson Dorothy L Sayers
Location: London
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency:
Type: softboiled
Comments: Middle-aged spinster appearing in at least two Lord Peter Wimsey stories: Unnatural Death and
Strong Poison. Her full name is Alexandra Katherine Climpson. She's the owner of the secreterial/detective
agency nicknamed "the Cattery" that Lord Peter helped to set up mainly so he could employ her investigative abilities on an "as needed" basis.
1928 Maude Silver Patricial Wentworth
Location: London
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency:
Type: softboiled
Comments: Spinster turns to PI work to supplement her retirement income.
1932 Baroness Clara Linz E(dward) Phillips Oppenheim
Location: London
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of agency: Advice Limited
Type: softboiled
Comments: She is English by birth, Austrian by marriage, glamorous and cosmopolitian. Seems to be a
widow at the time of the stories. Exotic foreigners and/or locations are prominant. Sometimes pretends to be the agency's secretary rather than its owner for no apparent reason other than to keep her connection to the agency a secret?
1933 Madame Rosika Storey Hulbert Footner (1879-1944)
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency:
Type: softboiled
Comments: Beautiful and aloof. Her secretary/narrator/companion is Bella Brickley (who has curly red hair). Rosika lives near Gramercy Park in NYC and has a pet monkey. She seems to solve cases by use of good guesswork, "practical psychology" and fortuitous prior knowledge of certain facts or people. The stories don't appear to aspire to play fair with the reader. Bella Brickley has to be the most fawning narrator in all of detective fiction. By comparison, she makes Bunny Manders seem almost arrogant toward Raffles. Although the stories are by no means silly, some of Rosika's actions and attitudes seem quite silly to a modern reader, though certainly not to Bella.
1933 Olga Knaresbrook Hazel Campbell
Location: England?
Lone/Agent/Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments:
1933 Trixie Meehan T T Flynn
Location: US
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency: Blaine Agency
Type: mediumboiled
Comments: A spunky Lois Lane type; usually paired with fellow agent Mike Harris.
1934 Grace "Redsie" Culver Roswell Brown (aka Jean Francis Webb)
Location: US
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency: Noonan Agency
Type:
Comments: She is the nominal secretary/assistant to "Big" Tim Noonan. Her sometime sidekick is
Jerry Riker.
1935 Violet McDade Cleve F Adams
Location: US
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency: McDade & Alverado Detective Agency
Type: hardboiled
Comments: Her partner is Nevada Alverado, who apparently is a very attractive woman.
1936 Sarah Watson D B McCandless
Location: Midwest US
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency: Watson Detective Agency
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: Hevey-set, middle-aged widow. "Young" Ben Todd is her assistant. Based in a small town. Prototype for Bertha Cool?
1937 Carrie Cashin Theodore Tinsley
Location: US
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency: Cash & Carry Detective Agency
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: Beautiful and dangerous. Aleck Burton poses as her boss for "appearances".
1937 Theodolinda "Dol" Bonner Rex Stout
Location: US, NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency: Bonner & Raffrey
Type: MediumBoiled
Comments: Upper class woman falls on hard times so starts a detective agency to earn a living.
Sally Colt is one of her agents. Appeared in one novel of her own, one Tecumseh Fox novel and
several Nero Wolfe adventures (most notably "Too Many Detectives").
1938 Mary Carner Zelda F Popkin
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency: Blankfort's
Type:
Comments: Department Store Dick. That's how Sharon McCone got her start---guarding dresses.
1938 Carole Trevor Hugh Pentecost (aka Judson P Phillips)
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency: Old Towne Detective Agency
Type: medium boiled
Comments: She is assisted by her ex-husband, Maxwell Blythe.
1939 Bertha Cool Earle Stanley Gardner
Location: LA
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency: B Cool Confidential Investigations
Type: hardboiled
Comments: Plus-size widow starts detective agency to earn a living. She is greedy and unethical.
Her junior partner is Donald Lamb who does all the legwork and much of the thinking.
1940 Amanda & Lutie Beagle Torrey Chanslor
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owners
Name of Agency:
Type: softboiled
Comments: The Beagle sisters inherit a detective agency from their brother Ezekiel. Their neice,
Mary Meecham narrates and Jeff Mahoney "does some of the legwork and all of the heavy lifting"
per T & E Schantz. The author was a children's book illustrator.
1941 Jean Abbott Frances Crane
Location: SF
Lone/Agent/Owner: Co-owner?
Name of Agency:
Type: softboiled?
Comments: Former New Mexico shopkeeper marries a San Francisco based PI (Patrick "Pat" Abbott) and
assists him on some of his cases. According to Victoria Nichols & Susan Thompson in Silk Stalkings (1988)
this series of 26 books leans more to HIBK school than mean streets.
1947 Gale Gallagher Gale Gallagher (aka Will Oursler & Margaret Scott)
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency: Acme Investigating Bureau, G. K. Gallagher, principal.
Type: mediumboiled
Comments: Skip Tracer/PI. Maybe a precurser of Stephanie Plum (minus the smart mouth and kookie family)? Appeared in I Found Him Dead (1947) and Chord in Crimson (1949). Patsy Higgins (a young Brooklyn woman) is her secretary/assistant. Gale learned her investigative skills from her father, a NYC policeman who was killed in the line of duty when Gale was a teenager. Gale's mother had died many years earlier. She is described as having light reddish brown hair and being about thirty or so years old. Gale is very concerned with fashion. She is constantly describing how she dresses and the reasoning behind each choice of outfits. Gale often re-freshens her make-up but she does carry a gun and thinks nothing of scrambling up fire escapes and trespassing to advance her investigations so her adventures were not solely aimed at a female readership. She acquires a handsome boyfriend in her first recorded case and my understanding is that she is still involved with him in her second case. Gale wears a lot of different hats during her investigations, not as part of various disguises but because they go along with all her different fashion outfits. She also smokes cigarettes and drinks hard liquor, in moderation. Oursler and Scott copied the Ellery Queen technique of pretending that the character's name is also the author's name.
1949 Miriam Birdseye Nancy Spain
Location: England?
Lone/Agent/Owner: Lone?
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments: Appeared in at least two books, Poison for Teacher (1949) and Out, Damned Tot (1952)
Miriam is an ex-actress turned detective according to Michele B Slung in Crime on Her Mind (1975).
1950 Eli? Donovan James L Rubel
Location:
Lone/Agent/Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments:
1955 Mavis Seidlitz Alan Geoffrey Yates (aka Carter Brown)
Location:
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent then Lone?
Name of Agency: Johnny Rios Detective Agency
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: Dizzy bolnde bombshell.
1956 Miss Hogg Austin Lee (aka John Austwick, Julian Callender) 1904-1965
Location: England?
Lone/Agent/Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments: Ex-school-mistress according to Michele B Slung in Crime on Her Mind (1975). Miss Hogg appeared
in nine books between 1955 and 1963.
1957 Honey West G G Fickling (aka Gloria & Forrest Fickling)
Location: LA
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency:
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: Combines Marilyn Monroe's looks with Emma Peel's athleticism. Inherited father's
detective agency. Boyfriend/sidekick is Johnny Doom?
1959 Marla Trent Henry Kane (aka Anthony McCall, Kenneth R McKay, Mario J Segola)
Location: NYC b 1918
Lone/Agent/Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments: Beauty & brains; sometimes paired with Peter Chambers.
1972 Cordelia Gray P D James
Location: London
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency: Pryde's Agency
Type: softboiled
Comments: 22 year old woman with an unusual childhood upbringing inherits a detective agency from
her friend and former business partner.
1973 Nicole Sweet Fran Huston (psd of Ron S Miller) b 1936
Location: Calif?
Lone/Agent/Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments: Michele B Slung in Crime on Her Mind (1975) notes that Nicole is a cop's daughter who seems to
be a female version of Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer. Appeared in The Rich Get It All (1973).
1974 Deliliah West Maxine O'Callahan
Location: So Calif
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency: West & West Investigations
Type: hardboiled?
Comments: Former LAPD policewoman starts detective agency with her husband (also ex-LAPD) and then carries on
after his death. The prototype for all realistic, post-feminist era hardboiled female PI's? After husband Jack dies, Delilah eventually changes name of her agency to West Investigations. Her office is in the city of Santa Ana and most of her casework is based in Orange County, CA. One wonders how much more success would have come O'Callahan's way had she finished and published the first Delilah West novel soon after the publication of the first Delilah West short story (1974). O'Callahan would have then beaten Marcia Muller (see below) to the punch by about two years According to the Thrilling Detective website (which credits Victoria Esposito-Shea for her help) here is a list of Delilah's recorded cases:
1974-"A Change of Clients"-short story
1981-Death Is Forever-novel
1982-Run From the Nightmare-novel
1989-Hit and Run-novel
1991-Set-Up-novel
1994-"Bad News"-short story
1996-Trade-Off-novel
1997-Down for the Count-novel
1998-"Diamonds Are For Never"-short story
1975 Angela Harpe James D Lawrence
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: African American PI. Former police officer, fashion model and call girl per Colleen A Barnett.
1976 Madge Hatchett Lee McGraw
Location: Chicago
Lone/Agent/ Owner: Lone
Name of Agency:
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: A female Mike Hammer?
1977 Sharon McCone Marcia Muller
Location: SF
Lone/Agent/Owner: First agent then owner
Name of Agency: All-Souls Legal Co-op then McCone Investigations
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: First post-feminist era realistic hardboiled female PI to appear in a novel written by a woman? Early job was in department store security----guarding dresses. Novels are uneven; short stories are generally top-notch. Novella, "The Broken Men" is a masterpiece.
1978 Helen Keremos Eve Zaremba
Location: Canada/US
Lone/Agent/Owner: Lone
Name of Agency:
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: First lesbian PI? Appeared in six novels between 1978 and 1997.
1978 Judith (never Judy) Eve Bernstein Singer Sharpe Susan Isaacs
Location: Long Island, NY
Lone/Agent/Owner: Lone
Name of Agency: NA
Type: Softboiled
Comments: Really does not belong on this list because Judith Singer is technically an amateur sleuth (but she most likely did receive a $5,000 reward posted by a regional dental association for solving the murder of a local periodontist, so that does make her a professional, sort of). Judith has appeared in four recorded cases (two novels and two short stories) as follows: Compromising Positions (1978), "Compliments of a Friend" (2000), Long Time No See (2001) and "After Lunch" (2008?). Judith is a 34 year old suburban housewife and mother of two when the series begins and ages throughout the saga. She is a blunt-spoken, sharped-tongued, warm-hearted, intelligent Jewish woman who has managed to involve herself in four murder investigations that occurred in her Long Island bedroom community of Shorehaven, NY. Her indepth knowledge of the inhabitants and customs of her suburban community combined with a keen intelligence is what allowed her to solve these murders. She is usually aided in her investigations by three continuing characters; a sexy homicide detective, her best friend Nancy (who is a borderline alcoholic and serial adulterer) and her annoying, empty-headed friend, Mary Alice (nicknamed Malice). The stories are bitingly satiric and hilarious funny; the detection is not bad, either. I can only wish that Susan Isaacs would stop writing mainstream novels and concentrate on producing more Judith Singer tales.
1979 Anna Jugedinski Phyllis Swann
Location:
Lone/Agent/Owner: Lone
Name of Agency:
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: Street smart former cop?
1980 Anna Lee Liza Cody
Location: London
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency: Brierly Security
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: Former cop.
1982 Kinsey Milhone Sue Grafton
Location: So Calif
Lone/Agent/Owner: Lone
Name of Agency:
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: Former cop. Novels are generallly strong, short stories vary in quality. Along with Marcia Muller
(see above) and Sara Paretsky (see below) author is considered among the "Big Three" of current female detective fiction writers.
1982 V I Warshawski Sara Paretsky
Location: Chicago
Lone/Agent/Owner: Lone
Name of Agency:
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: Though author's short stories vary in quality, overall they are stronger than Grafton's but weaker than Muller's. Novels tend to show author's liberal-leaning beliefs but storytelling is not hurt by this. Seems to write fewer but longer novels compared to Muller and Grafton.
1994 Ling Wan-Ju "Lydia" Chin SJ Rozan
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent?Owner: Owner
Name of Agency: Chin Investigative Services (or sometimes) Lydia Chin Investigations
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: Lydia is a twenty-something year old ABC (American Born Chinese) woman who lives with her mother in Chinatown and runs her agency out of a storefront office on Canal Street. Her sometimes partner is Bill Smith, a 40-something white PI who's interest in Lydia is more than avuncular. They appear together (and sometimes separately) in eleven novels and several short stories begining in 1994. Lydia has a loving but prickly relationship with her mother who strongly disapproves of her chosen profession, not only because of its dangers but also because her detective work rarely brings her into contact with suitable potential marriage partners. Lydia has at least four older brothers who have successful "traditional" careers. Although the author does not clearly state that Lydia is strikingly beautiful, the way male characters tend to react to her (both overtly and covertly) makes it clear that she is one of the most attractive female characters in business today. Lydia is very petite but she is proficient in martial arts and does carry a gun, so she is a match for most of the criminals and lowlifes she runs into during her investigations.
Some sources I used:
Crime On Her Mind
1975
Michele B. Slung
A woman who investigates crimes, apparent crimes, mysterious circumstances/events on at least a semi-regular basis while seeking compensation for her efforts but does not currently work for a government agency, body, group or organization. In short, not a policewoman nor an amateur sleuth but a women who tries to earn a living by investigating crimes outside of government employment.
TIME CHART
Year Character Author
1864 Mrs G(ladding?) Adrew W Forrester Jr Location: ?
Lone/Agent/Owner: ?
Name of agency: ?
Type: ?
Comments: Appeared in The Female Detective and The Unkown Weapon. Had a woman assistant.
1882 Denver Doll Edwin L Wheeler
Location: American West
Lone/Agent/Owner: ?
Name of agency: ?
Type: Medium Boiled
Comments: Sort of a Dime Novel combo of Annie Oakley & Dale Evans. Appeared in 4 stories in Beadle's Half-Dime Library in 1882-83. Known as "The Detective Queen". Author also created "Deadwood Dick" character.
1883 Clarice Dyke Harry Rockwood (aka Ernest Avon Young, Donald J McKenzie)
Location: Boston
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency: ?
Type: Softboiled
Comments: Works for/with husband, Donald Dyke.
1886 Kate Edwards (Goelet?) Harlan P Halsey (aka "Old Sleuth", Tony Pastor, Judson R Taylor)
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of agency: ?
Type: Mediumboiled
Comments: "Lady Kate, the Dashing Female Detective" seems to be a Dime-Novel version of Honey West who, unlike Honey, manages to keep her clothes on.
1889 Hilda Serene Albert W. Aiken
Location:
Lone/Agent/Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments: 25 year old detective appeared in "The Actress Detective: Or, The Invisible Hand: The Romance of an Implacable Mission".
1891 Maggie Everett Harlan P Halsey? (aka "Old Sleuth", Tony Pastor, Judson R Taylor)
Location: ?
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of agency: Badger & Co
Type: ?
Comments: ?
1892 Laura Keen C. Little
Location: American West?
Lone/Agent/ Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: Appeared in Laura Keen, the Queen of Detectives per Michele B Slung in Crime on Her Mind (1975).
Appears to be a Dime-novel type heroine maybe similar to Denver Doll? (see above).
1892 Dorcas Dene (nee Lester) George R Sims
Location: England
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent/Owner
Name of Agency: ?
Type: softboiled
Comments: Her dramatist friend, Mr Saxon, acts as her Watson per CJ Rzepka. Retired actress begins working for her neighbor's detective agency before eventually taking it over. Dorcas has to earn living to support her family because artist husband, Paul Dene, has become blind. Household also consists of Dorcas's mother (Mrs Lester) and a bulldog named Toddlekins. Storytelling style and plotlines are similar to the Loveday Brooke stories by C L Pirkis (see below). Stories often involve secret marriages, mistaken identity, lunatic asylums and stolen inheritances. Men behaving badly are ubiquitious.
1894 Loveday Brooke Catherine Louisa Pirkis
Location: London
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency: Lynch Court Detective Agency?
Type: Softboiled
Comments: Upper class woman falls on hard times, works as a PI to earn a living. Boss is Ebenezer Dyer.
Storytelling style and plotlines are similar to the Dorcas Dene stories by George R Sims (see above). Main
difference between Loveday and Dorcas is that at the end of a case Dorcas returns to a loving household
while Loveday seems to have no friends or relatives she can turn to for solice or company.
1894 Coralie Urquhart M(ary) E(lizaeth) Braddon (aka Mrs John Maxwell)
Location:
Lone/Agent/Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments: Appeared in Thou Art the Man. Author had written Lady Audley's Secret in 1862.
1894 "The Squirrel"? Charleton Savage (aka Carlton Strange)
Location: ?
Lone/Agent/Owner: ?
Name of Agency: ?
Type: Softboiled?
Comments: Appeared in The Beech Court Mystery. She is the daughter of a poacher?
1894 Annie Cory Mrs George Corbett (aka Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett)
Location: ?
Lone/Agent/Owner: ?
Name of Agency: ?
Type: ?
Comments: Appeared in When the Sea Gives Up Its Dead. Author also wrote a book of ss titled Adventures of a Lady Detective in 1890 but scant info exists. Is Annie Cory the "Lady Detective"? Or is it Bell White (who works for/with Robert "Bob" White) from Secrets of a Private Inquiry Office? (1890). Detects alongside her father per
Michele B. Slung's reading of Victorian Detective Fiction (1966).
1895 Rose Cortenay Milton Danvers (aka J Edmond Long)
Location: England
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency: ?
Type: ?
Comments: Appears in The Fatal Finger Mark, Rose Cortenay's First Case (1895) as an agent of the agency
owned by Robert Spicer as per CJ Rzepka.
1895 Mignon Lawrence Albert W. Aiken
Location: American West
Lone/Agent/Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type: Hardboiled?
Comments: Former NYC policewoman detects out West under the guise of being a barber? Partner is Joe Phoenix. Appeared in "The Female-Barber Detective: Or, Joe Phenix in Silver City".
1895 Caroline "Cad" Metti Harlan P. Halsey
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency: ?
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: Appeared in "Cad Metti: The Female Detective Strategist: Or, Dudie Dunne, Again in the Field" and possibly two other stories. Oscar Woodford "Dudie" Dunne is Cad's boss/partner. Cad is a beautiful Italian-American dark-haired young woman who can sing, dance, fence, wrestle and shoot with great expertise. She, like her boss, is a master of disguise (what top-notch detective of that era wasn't) and can tail/follow anyone, anytime without being noticed. She also enjoys a good fight and doesn't shy away from administering a severe beating (with her trusty small billy club) to any criminal who deserves it. Cad earns her moniker of "Detective Strategist" mainly by doing the thinking for her boss/partner, Dudie Dunne, on those occasions when Dudie falls prey to a pretty woman of questionable character. The Dudie Dunne character almost shouts out for a deeper analysis than I am qualified to offer. Although he is slight of build, he is quite athletic, adept at disguises and expert at tailing suspects. Both Dudie (the nickname refers to his penchant for dressing like a dude) and Cad often assume the guise of the opposite sex, even when the plot doesn't really call for such actions. Cad and Dudie sometimes even disguise themselves as each other, but, as mentioned above, this cross-dressing doesn't serve to further the plot in any appreciable way. "Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist...,etc." is a Dime-novel, pot-boiler describing the detectives efforts to capture a gang of master criminals who are about to unleash a world-wide counterfeiting scheme. These so-called mastermind criminals were able to somehow organize a sophisticated international plot of great complexity, yet, due mainly to their own stupidity, become easy prey to a couple of NYC detectives who seem to like to cross-dress as much as they like to fight crime. Other than some interesting descriptions of the Sheepshead Bay--Coney Island sections of Brooklyn, this is a poorly written adventure story with little true detection on display.
1898 Lois Cayley Grant Allen
Location: England, Europe, Asia
Lone/Agent/Owner: ?
Name of Agency: ?
Type: Soft?
Comments: Really more Adventuress than Detective as indicated by title of book she appears in, Miss Cayley's Adventures. She is 21, dark complexion, eyes & hair.
1899 Florence Cusak L T Meade & R Eustace
Location: England?
Lone/Agent/Owner: ?
Name of Agency: ?
Type: Soft?
Comments: Dark blue eyes & raven hair. Appears in 4 stories in Harmsworth Magazine. Narrator/friend is
Dr Lonsdale. The story I read tries to mimic a Sherlock Holmes-type adventure.
1899 Mrs Mollie Delamere Beatrice Heron-Maxwell
Location: London?
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent?
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments: A widow who is a part time journalist and an appraiser/agent for a pearl merchant. Apparently Mollie foils crimes while working for the pearl merchant? per Michele B Slung in Crime on Her Mind (1975).
1900 Dora Myrl M(atthias) McDonnell Bodkin
Location: London?
Lone/Agent/Owner: Lone
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments:
1900 Hilda Wade Grant Allen
Location: ?
Lone/Agent/Owner: ?
Name of Agency: ?
Type: ?
Comments: Apparently was a nurse who happens to solve mysteries so probably not eligible for this list.
Perhaps Mary Roberts Rinehart read these stories and named her nurse detective, Hilda Adams, after
Grant Allen's protaganist? Hilda Adams (Miss Pinkerton) is not eligible for this list because she is an
undercover police detective (and a nurse), not a PI. Note on the finances of Rinehart's Hilda Adams: Since she usually was paid both by the police and the families into whose home her boss secretly plants her when working on a case (and when in-between cases she could always find nurse-related employment) she must have made a nice living throughout her long career.
1903? Bella Thorn Tom Gallon
Location: London?
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency: Secretarial Supply Syndicate, Ltd.
Type: Soft?
Comments: Probably more an amateur sleuth/typist than a PI per my reading of Michele B Slung's comments in Crime on Her Mind (1975).
1904 Mademoiselle Lucie Harlan P. Halsey
Location:
Lone/Agent/Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments: Appeared in "Mademoiselle Lucie, the French Lady Detective". Jerry Mack is her male partner.
1906 Frances Baird R(eginald) W(right) Kauffman
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent /Owner: Agent
Name of Agency: Watkins Private Detective Agency
Type: ?
Comments: Appeared in Miss Frances Baird, Detective: A Passage from her Memoirs (1906).
1909 Alice Montgomery Francis W Doughty
Location: ?
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency: Old & Young King Brady
Type: ?
Comments: ?
1909? (or 1917) Millicent Newberry Jeanette Lee (aka Barbour Perry)
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent then Owner
Name of Agency: Tom Corbin's Agency, then her own
Type: soft
Comments: Former seamstress, tiny with grey hair & eyes. Colleen Barnett in Mystery Women says appeareed in 3 books The Green Jacket (1917), The Mysterious Office (1922) & Dead Right (1925) but not in Simeon
Tetlow's Shadow (1909).
1911 Ida Lee Marie Conner Leighton
Location: England?
Lone/Agent/Owner:
Name of Agency: ?
Type: ?
Comments: Appeared in The Bride of Dutton Market.
1914 Madelyn Mack Hugh C Weir
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent then Owner then Lone
Name of Agency:
Type: softboiled?
Comments: Started as assistant house detective for the Niegel Dry Goods store then becomes owner of a large agency on Fifth Avenue. Housekeeper was Susan Bolton. Reporter Nora Noraker was her narrator. She went to college and modeled herself on Sherlock Holmes per Colleen Barnett in Mystery Women. Appeared in Miss Madelyn Mack, Detective (1914). Stories are very reminiscent of Doyle's detective stories though not quite as good. Just like Holmes, Madelyn turns to a drug, of sorts, when depressed or bored---Cola berries?? She is so successful in her detecting exploits that at one point she owns an agency employing several "agents" and a secretary/receptionist and a second home---a country house located north of NYC overlooking the Hudson River.
Eventually she becomes wealthy enough to downsize her agency and work part time solving crimes that interest
her. The one story I read was entertaining but unfairly-clued.
1915 Violet Strange Anna Katherine Green (Roelphs)
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency:
Type: softboiled
Comments: Teenage heiress secretly works as PI to raise cash to help estranged (by father) older sister.
Appeared in The Golden Slipper & Other Problems for Violet Strange (1915). Several of the stories feature
puzzling plots with satisfying solutions. These stories are somewhat more easily approached by modern readers compared to the author's Gryce/Butterworth works.
1916 Clare Kendall Arthur B Reeve
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency:
Type: softboiled?
Comments: Appeared in a Craig Kennedy story "The Ear in the Wall" as the owner of a detective agency
specializing in helping women. Maybe a precursor to Dol Bonner's relationship with Nero Wolfe? Clare is described as a dark-haired, grey-eyed, not-unattractive, intelligent woman who had started out as an operative for one of the large NYC detective agencies and eventually opened her own agency. Like Reeve's main detective, Craig Kennedy, and his other detective/adventuress creation Constance Dunlap (see below), Clare seems to spend much of her time fighting against or dealing with the pervasive corruption created by the Tammany Hall political machine which dominated NYC from roughly 1840 to 1930. Clare apparently also worked closely with the suffragette movement.
1916 Molly Morganthau Babbits Geraldine Bonner
Location:
Lone/Agent/Owner: Lone
Name of Agency:
Type: softboiled
Comments: Former department store worker and switchboard operator turned part time sleuth. Sometimes worked with reporter/husband "Soapy" Babbits. Colleen Barnett in Mystery Women believes Molly was the first blue collar worker who became a female detective although because she may not have seeked payment for her services she is probably ineligible for this list. Appeared in The Girl at Central (1915), The Black Eagle Mystery (1916), and Miss Maitland, Private Secretary (1919).
1916 Constance Dunlap Arthur B Reeve
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner?
Name of Agency:
Type: mediumboiled?
Comments: Housewife then widow then adventuress then criminal then detective? Appeared in Constance Dunlap, Woman Detective (1913?). Stories are written in the same overwrought melodramatic style as Reeve's
Craig Kenney stories. New (at the time) inventions, such as fish-eye lenses, are often showcased in the stories.
Municipal corruption seems endemic.
1917 Evelyn Temple Ronald Gorell Barnes (aka Lord Gorell)
Location:
Lone/Agent/ Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments: Scientific detective? Michele B Slung labels her as an amateur sleuth so probably ineligible for this list.
1918 Solange Fontaine (Mrs) F(ryniwyd Wynifried Margaret) Tennyson Jesse (Harwood)
Location: France
Lone/Agent/Owner: Lone
Name of Agency: ?
Type: Softboiled (but does sometimes carry a gun)
Comments: I've only read one story. Solange seems to accept payment for her services so I believe she should be on this list. According to Michael Grost there is an uncollected group of short stories from 1918, a second group of stories collected and published in 1929 called The Solange Stories, an uncollected story from 1930 and a novel, A Pin to See the Peepshow from 1934. The stories seem to be well written with coherent plots and well developed characters. Mike Grost compares Jess's style to that of Somerset Maughams's. Solange claims to have the ability to sense the presence of evil.
1919? Lucille Dare Marie Connor Leighton
Location: London?
Lone/Agent/Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments: Michele B Slung in Crime on Her Mind (1975) notes that Lucille is a mistress of disguise and has
been involved in many cases, most are unrecorded.
1923 Miss Balmy Rymal Arthur Stringer
Location: US?
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency: Security Alliance
Type:
Comments: Michele B Slung in Crime on Her Mind (1975) suggests that the main client of the agency Balmy
works for is the Jewleler's Protective Union.
1923 Sylvia Shale Mrs Sydney Groom
Location: NY
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency:
Type: softboiled?
Comments:
1927 Kitty Climpson Dorothy L Sayers
Location: London
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency:
Type: softboiled
Comments: Middle-aged spinster appearing in at least two Lord Peter Wimsey stories: Unnatural Death and
Strong Poison. Her full name is Alexandra Katherine Climpson. She's the owner of the secreterial/detective
agency nicknamed "the Cattery" that Lord Peter helped to set up mainly so he could employ her investigative abilities on an "as needed" basis.
1928 Maude Silver Patricial Wentworth
Location: London
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency:
Type: softboiled
Comments: Spinster turns to PI work to supplement her retirement income.
1932 Baroness Clara Linz E(dward) Phillips Oppenheim
Location: London
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of agency: Advice Limited
Type: softboiled
Comments: She is English by birth, Austrian by marriage, glamorous and cosmopolitian. Seems to be a
widow at the time of the stories. Exotic foreigners and/or locations are prominant. Sometimes pretends to be the agency's secretary rather than its owner for no apparent reason other than to keep her connection to the agency a secret?
1933 Madame Rosika Storey Hulbert Footner (1879-1944)
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency:
Type: softboiled
Comments: Beautiful and aloof. Her secretary/narrator/companion is Bella Brickley (who has curly red hair). Rosika lives near Gramercy Park in NYC and has a pet monkey. She seems to solve cases by use of good guesswork, "practical psychology" and fortuitous prior knowledge of certain facts or people. The stories don't appear to aspire to play fair with the reader. Bella Brickley has to be the most fawning narrator in all of detective fiction. By comparison, she makes Bunny Manders seem almost arrogant toward Raffles. Although the stories are by no means silly, some of Rosika's actions and attitudes seem quite silly to a modern reader, though certainly not to Bella.
1933 Olga Knaresbrook Hazel Campbell
Location: England?
Lone/Agent/Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments:
1933 Trixie Meehan T T Flynn
Location: US
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency: Blaine Agency
Type: mediumboiled
Comments: A spunky Lois Lane type; usually paired with fellow agent Mike Harris.
1934 Grace "Redsie" Culver Roswell Brown (aka Jean Francis Webb)
Location: US
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency: Noonan Agency
Type:
Comments: She is the nominal secretary/assistant to "Big" Tim Noonan. Her sometime sidekick is
Jerry Riker.
1935 Violet McDade Cleve F Adams
Location: US
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency: McDade & Alverado Detective Agency
Type: hardboiled
Comments: Her partner is Nevada Alverado, who apparently is a very attractive woman.
1936 Sarah Watson D B McCandless
Location: Midwest US
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency: Watson Detective Agency
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: Hevey-set, middle-aged widow. "Young" Ben Todd is her assistant. Based in a small town. Prototype for Bertha Cool?
1937 Carrie Cashin Theodore Tinsley
Location: US
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency: Cash & Carry Detective Agency
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: Beautiful and dangerous. Aleck Burton poses as her boss for "appearances".
1937 Theodolinda "Dol" Bonner Rex Stout
Location: US, NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency: Bonner & Raffrey
Type: MediumBoiled
Comments: Upper class woman falls on hard times so starts a detective agency to earn a living.
Sally Colt is one of her agents. Appeared in one novel of her own, one Tecumseh Fox novel and
several Nero Wolfe adventures (most notably "Too Many Detectives").
1938 Mary Carner Zelda F Popkin
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency: Blankfort's
Type:
Comments: Department Store Dick. That's how Sharon McCone got her start---guarding dresses.
1938 Carole Trevor Hugh Pentecost (aka Judson P Phillips)
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency: Old Towne Detective Agency
Type: medium boiled
Comments: She is assisted by her ex-husband, Maxwell Blythe.
1939 Bertha Cool Earle Stanley Gardner
Location: LA
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency: B Cool Confidential Investigations
Type: hardboiled
Comments: Plus-size widow starts detective agency to earn a living. She is greedy and unethical.
Her junior partner is Donald Lamb who does all the legwork and much of the thinking.
1940 Amanda & Lutie Beagle Torrey Chanslor
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owners
Name of Agency:
Type: softboiled
Comments: The Beagle sisters inherit a detective agency from their brother Ezekiel. Their neice,
Mary Meecham narrates and Jeff Mahoney "does some of the legwork and all of the heavy lifting"
per T & E Schantz. The author was a children's book illustrator.
1941 Jean Abbott Frances Crane
Location: SF
Lone/Agent/Owner: Co-owner?
Name of Agency:
Type: softboiled?
Comments: Former New Mexico shopkeeper marries a San Francisco based PI (Patrick "Pat" Abbott) and
assists him on some of his cases. According to Victoria Nichols & Susan Thompson in Silk Stalkings (1988)
this series of 26 books leans more to HIBK school than mean streets.
1947 Gale Gallagher Gale Gallagher (aka Will Oursler & Margaret Scott)
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency: Acme Investigating Bureau, G. K. Gallagher, principal.
Type: mediumboiled
Comments: Skip Tracer/PI. Maybe a precurser of Stephanie Plum (minus the smart mouth and kookie family)? Appeared in I Found Him Dead (1947) and Chord in Crimson (1949). Patsy Higgins (a young Brooklyn woman) is her secretary/assistant. Gale learned her investigative skills from her father, a NYC policeman who was killed in the line of duty when Gale was a teenager. Gale's mother had died many years earlier. She is described as having light reddish brown hair and being about thirty or so years old. Gale is very concerned with fashion. She is constantly describing how she dresses and the reasoning behind each choice of outfits. Gale often re-freshens her make-up but she does carry a gun and thinks nothing of scrambling up fire escapes and trespassing to advance her investigations so her adventures were not solely aimed at a female readership. She acquires a handsome boyfriend in her first recorded case and my understanding is that she is still involved with him in her second case. Gale wears a lot of different hats during her investigations, not as part of various disguises but because they go along with all her different fashion outfits. She also smokes cigarettes and drinks hard liquor, in moderation. Oursler and Scott copied the Ellery Queen technique of pretending that the character's name is also the author's name.
1949 Miriam Birdseye Nancy Spain
Location: England?
Lone/Agent/Owner: Lone?
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments: Appeared in at least two books, Poison for Teacher (1949) and Out, Damned Tot (1952)
Miriam is an ex-actress turned detective according to Michele B Slung in Crime on Her Mind (1975).
1950 Eli? Donovan James L Rubel
Location:
Lone/Agent/Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments:
1955 Mavis Seidlitz Alan Geoffrey Yates (aka Carter Brown)
Location:
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent then Lone?
Name of Agency: Johnny Rios Detective Agency
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: Dizzy bolnde bombshell.
1956 Miss Hogg Austin Lee (aka John Austwick, Julian Callender) 1904-1965
Location: England?
Lone/Agent/Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments: Ex-school-mistress according to Michele B Slung in Crime on Her Mind (1975). Miss Hogg appeared
in nine books between 1955 and 1963.
1957 Honey West G G Fickling (aka Gloria & Forrest Fickling)
Location: LA
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency:
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: Combines Marilyn Monroe's looks with Emma Peel's athleticism. Inherited father's
detective agency. Boyfriend/sidekick is Johnny Doom?
1959 Marla Trent Henry Kane (aka Anthony McCall, Kenneth R McKay, Mario J Segola)
Location: NYC b 1918
Lone/Agent/Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments: Beauty & brains; sometimes paired with Peter Chambers.
1972 Cordelia Gray P D James
Location: London
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency: Pryde's Agency
Type: softboiled
Comments: 22 year old woman with an unusual childhood upbringing inherits a detective agency from
her friend and former business partner.
1973 Nicole Sweet Fran Huston (psd of Ron S Miller) b 1936
Location: Calif?
Lone/Agent/Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type:
Comments: Michele B Slung in Crime on Her Mind (1975) notes that Nicole is a cop's daughter who seems to
be a female version of Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer. Appeared in The Rich Get It All (1973).
1974 Deliliah West Maxine O'Callahan
Location: So Calif
Lone/Agent/Owner: Owner
Name of Agency: West & West Investigations
Type: hardboiled?
Comments: Former LAPD policewoman starts detective agency with her husband (also ex-LAPD) and then carries on
after his death. The prototype for all realistic, post-feminist era hardboiled female PI's? After husband Jack dies, Delilah eventually changes name of her agency to West Investigations. Her office is in the city of Santa Ana and most of her casework is based in Orange County, CA. One wonders how much more success would have come O'Callahan's way had she finished and published the first Delilah West novel soon after the publication of the first Delilah West short story (1974). O'Callahan would have then beaten Marcia Muller (see below) to the punch by about two years According to the Thrilling Detective website (which credits Victoria Esposito-Shea for her help) here is a list of Delilah's recorded cases:
1974-"A Change of Clients"-short story
1981-Death Is Forever-novel
1982-Run From the Nightmare-novel
1989-Hit and Run-novel
1991-Set-Up-novel
1994-"Bad News"-short story
1996-Trade-Off-novel
1997-Down for the Count-novel
1998-"Diamonds Are For Never"-short story
1975 Angela Harpe James D Lawrence
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent/Owner:
Name of Agency:
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: African American PI. Former police officer, fashion model and call girl per Colleen A Barnett.
1976 Madge Hatchett Lee McGraw
Location: Chicago
Lone/Agent/ Owner: Lone
Name of Agency:
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: A female Mike Hammer?
1977 Sharon McCone Marcia Muller
Location: SF
Lone/Agent/Owner: First agent then owner
Name of Agency: All-Souls Legal Co-op then McCone Investigations
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: First post-feminist era realistic hardboiled female PI to appear in a novel written by a woman? Early job was in department store security----guarding dresses. Novels are uneven; short stories are generally top-notch. Novella, "The Broken Men" is a masterpiece.
1978 Helen Keremos Eve Zaremba
Location: Canada/US
Lone/Agent/Owner: Lone
Name of Agency:
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: First lesbian PI? Appeared in six novels between 1978 and 1997.
1978 Judith (never Judy) Eve Bernstein Singer Sharpe Susan Isaacs
Location: Long Island, NY
Lone/Agent/Owner: Lone
Name of Agency: NA
Type: Softboiled
Comments: Really does not belong on this list because Judith Singer is technically an amateur sleuth (but she most likely did receive a $5,000 reward posted by a regional dental association for solving the murder of a local periodontist, so that does make her a professional, sort of). Judith has appeared in four recorded cases (two novels and two short stories) as follows: Compromising Positions (1978), "Compliments of a Friend" (2000), Long Time No See (2001) and "After Lunch" (2008?). Judith is a 34 year old suburban housewife and mother of two when the series begins and ages throughout the saga. She is a blunt-spoken, sharped-tongued, warm-hearted, intelligent Jewish woman who has managed to involve herself in four murder investigations that occurred in her Long Island bedroom community of Shorehaven, NY. Her indepth knowledge of the inhabitants and customs of her suburban community combined with a keen intelligence is what allowed her to solve these murders. She is usually aided in her investigations by three continuing characters; a sexy homicide detective, her best friend Nancy (who is a borderline alcoholic and serial adulterer) and her annoying, empty-headed friend, Mary Alice (nicknamed Malice). The stories are bitingly satiric and hilarious funny; the detection is not bad, either. I can only wish that Susan Isaacs would stop writing mainstream novels and concentrate on producing more Judith Singer tales.
1979 Anna Jugedinski Phyllis Swann
Location:
Lone/Agent/Owner: Lone
Name of Agency:
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: Street smart former cop?
1980 Anna Lee Liza Cody
Location: London
Lone/Agent/Owner: Agent
Name of Agency: Brierly Security
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: Former cop.
1982 Kinsey Milhone Sue Grafton
Location: So Calif
Lone/Agent/Owner: Lone
Name of Agency:
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: Former cop. Novels are generallly strong, short stories vary in quality. Along with Marcia Muller
(see above) and Sara Paretsky (see below) author is considered among the "Big Three" of current female detective fiction writers.
1982 V I Warshawski Sara Paretsky
Location: Chicago
Lone/Agent/Owner: Lone
Name of Agency:
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: Though author's short stories vary in quality, overall they are stronger than Grafton's but weaker than Muller's. Novels tend to show author's liberal-leaning beliefs but storytelling is not hurt by this. Seems to write fewer but longer novels compared to Muller and Grafton.
1994 Ling Wan-Ju "Lydia" Chin SJ Rozan
Location: NYC
Lone/Agent?Owner: Owner
Name of Agency: Chin Investigative Services (or sometimes) Lydia Chin Investigations
Type: Hardboiled
Comments: Lydia is a twenty-something year old ABC (American Born Chinese) woman who lives with her mother in Chinatown and runs her agency out of a storefront office on Canal Street. Her sometimes partner is Bill Smith, a 40-something white PI who's interest in Lydia is more than avuncular. They appear together (and sometimes separately) in eleven novels and several short stories begining in 1994. Lydia has a loving but prickly relationship with her mother who strongly disapproves of her chosen profession, not only because of its dangers but also because her detective work rarely brings her into contact with suitable potential marriage partners. Lydia has at least four older brothers who have successful "traditional" careers. Although the author does not clearly state that Lydia is strikingly beautiful, the way male characters tend to react to her (both overtly and covertly) makes it clear that she is one of the most attractive female characters in business today. Lydia is very petite but she is proficient in martial arts and does carry a gun, so she is a match for most of the criminals and lowlifes she runs into during her investigations.
Some sources I used:
Crime On Her Mind
1975
Michele B. Slung
