Crimefile: There's a line in an old song that goes, "They say that the women are worse than the men . . ."
Well, where crime fiction writing is concerned, they're certainly as bad, able to concoct blood and violence, gruesome plots - take Patricia Cornwell's forensic grisliness, for example - and hair-raising resolutions. So, for a change, here's a sextet of women writers to cast your eye over.
Sara Paretsky's Fire Sale is up to standard for this particular author. By my count this is her eleventh VI Warshawski novel, and they just get better and better. This time her private investigator protagonist is back in the south Chicago of her youth, a place of violence and crime that she made it her business to get out of as soon as she could. Called back by her former teacher, who is now too ill to carry out her duties, Warshawski is persuaded to coach a girls' basketball team. Reluctantly she agrees, but finds the girls difficult to deal with.
However, one of them asks her to speak to her mother about her concerns for the factory she works in, the mother believing that attempts are being made to sabotage said factory. Fears are realised when the factory blows up, Warshawski is injured and the owner killed. Fire Sale is a densely textured novel, full of weird and wonderful characters, and with a plot that would satisfy the most critical. Let's hear it for Paretsky.
Val McDermid's The Grave Tattoo is another highly satisfying suspense thriller. Like Paretsky, McDermid has been at this kind of thing for a long time, and in this present offering her powers show no signs of waning. The plot is intricately presented: Wordsworth scholar Jane Gresham has heard rumours that some priceless documents of the poet's may be owned by a family living in the Lake District and is hoping to get her hands on them. There is also the centuries-old tale that Fletcher Christian of HMS Bounty fame faked his own death in order to return to England, and was hidden by Wordsworth. Soon a series of modern-day murders occur, with Jane caught in the middle. It is obvious that some unscrupulous person is also after the Wordsworth documents, and the poem he is supposed to have written about Christian. Jane herself nearly loses her life before the crimes are solved and the criminal brought to book. Highly recommended.
Jill Paton Walsh, author of Debts of Dishonour, has completed two Dorothy L Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey books. The protagonist of the current offering, Imogen Quy, could well have fitted in as one of Sayers's heroines: she is the down-to-earth college nurse at St Agatha's College, Cambridge. The fabulously wealthy Sir Julius Farren is invited to dine at the college, the hope being that he will make a generous endowment. When he appears to die suddenly, leaving a large shortfall in the company accounts, Imogen begins to investigate. Needless to say she turns up all kinds of dirty work, but is indefatigable in her resolve to carry the day. This is one for those who love a traditional English mystery.
The locale for Linda Fairstein's Death Dance is New York, or Manhattan to be exact. Her sleuth is Assistant DA Alexandra Cooper, based on herself, for Fairstein was the Assistant DA of Manhattan's sex crimes unit until she took early retirement to concentrate on writing. We are in the theatre district, with Cooper investigating the violent death of Natalya Galinova, helped by detectives Mercer Wallace and Mike Chapman. The sinister Berk clan, the monstrous pater familias Joe, the equally diabolical niece Mona, and Briggs, who only seems to turn up when something bad is going on, is corrupting Broadway. Cooper, as she gets in further, finds herself in danger, as a killer well versed in the social goings-on of the theatre world gets on her trail. This is one of the best of the American practitioners of crime fiction writing at her best.
Jacqueline Winspear's Pardonable Lies places us back in 1930s London, in the company of psychologist and investigator Maisie Dobbs.
I feel it will only be a question of time before this series hits the television screens, for it is just made for it. This case opens with Maisie being asked by Sir Cedric Lawton to prove that his son Ralph is indeed dead. Strange request, for Ralph was an aviator who was shot down by enemy fire in 1917. As if this is not enough, our heroine also has to deal with the problem of an avenging daughter, who blames Maisie for her mother's death. Again a traditional English offering, with very little explicit violence, but immensely readable for all that.
Karen Robards's Superstition is billed as a comedy-thriller, and it is written in a light vein, with a lot of tongue in cheek. Set on Pawley's Island in South Carolina, it is concerned with the 15-year-old stabbing of Tara Mitchell, and the disappearance of her two friends. TV reporter Nicky Sullivan believes the story could be her big break, and arranges for a live television seance in an attempt to contact the girls. Everything, of course, goes wrong, and another young woman is stabbed to death in precisely the same way as Tara. Where is the comedy in all this, one wonders? Well, mainly in the lightness of touch of the author and in the relationship between her heroine Nicky and the enigmatic police chief of the island, Joe Franconi. This one could well make the big screen.
• Vincent Banville is a writer and criticCrimefile
Fire Sale by Sara Paretsky Hodder & Stoughton, £12.99; The Grave Tattoo by Val McDermid HarperCollins, £17.99; Debts of Dishonour by Jill Paton Walsh Hodder & Stoughton, £18.99; Death Dance by Linda Fairstein Little Brown, £12.99; Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear John Murray, £12.99; Superstition by Karen Robards H