An popular distillation of a deep study of the literature and history of female detectives in fact and fiction. (Full disclosure: Lodge is a colleague of mine at St Andrews, although we’ve never met.)

The genesis of the book comes from Lodge reading two fictional accounts of lady detectives written in 1862: what suddenly brought this about? She discovers a rich seam of “dime” or “penny dreadful” novels that feature lady sleuths as protagonists, as well as – less well-known umtil now – an enormous number of plays that were performed to large audiences. A further search of newspaper archives reveals that private investigation agencies (which proliferated after the wider legalisation of divorce in the mid 19th century) often boasted of employing female detectives – the profession that overlaps considerably with that of actress, with both requiring creativity and confidence. (There is also considerable overlap with sex work.)

The most revealing observations in this book are the way it interprets the interactions of detectives with class, gender, and other social identities. While fictional lady detectives were middle class and solved complex middle-class crimes, in reality lady detectives were more typically working class and engaged in finding material to support a divorce or supporting the prosection of working-class crimes like fortune-telling. Many were wives of police officers, and were often mothers – or were presented as such in the press in order to make them more sympathetic. Some became quite well-known either through their own accomplishments or by being reported by (typically) male writers.

Many, both fictional and real, lived lives that sat outside the usually strict gender expectations, making them both useful examples for early suffragettes and aspirational figures for those who felt trapped in their positions. Some were clearly gay. But in good Victorian tradition the fictional female detectives frequently ended the book married (often to an intellectually outclassed husband), with the normal social order restored.

All in all this is an accessible presentation of work that’s full of academic rigour and a deep knowledge of the literature, press, and vernacular of the time. It certainly a book that makes me want to read some of the authors mentioned, few of whom (with the exception of Wilkie Collins) have any modern visibility at all.

4/5. Finished Saturday 26 April, 2025.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)