Team W (the writing team of Karen White, Beatriz Williams and Lauren Willig) cut their reading teeth on the G.O.A.T female sleuth series featuring the iconic Nancy Drew. Move over Hardy Boys and Encyclopedia Brown. Nobody was as clever—or as well-dressed—as Nancy. Her powers of deduction, amplified by practical assistance from her buddies Bess and George, created an unbeatable team where the Y chromosome was superfluous. Nancy and her friends used their brains instead of brawn and became literary female role models through which more than one impressionable future novelist’s starry eyes could envision characters and plots for books yet to be written.
It was perhaps inevitable that a writing team of three women whose reading histories were heavily influenced by Nancy Drew would find themselves crafting an “Agatha Christie meets Murder, She Wrote” locked-room mystery: The Author’s Guide to Murder, in which three amateur female sleuths find their strengths and form friendships while solving a murder.
Based on the sheer number of literary female sleuths over the decades, clearly, we’re not the only ones who love this trope. Here are some of our favorite female detectives of the past century…..
It’s no surprise this list would start out with the OG, Nancy Drew. The Secret of the Old Clock is Book 1 of 163 (although that number continues to grow, including junior spin off series such as Nancy Drew Clue Crew) and was the introduction for many young readers to not only America’s favorite teenaged sleuth and her friends, but also to reading. First published in 1930, the book still holds up as a classic with a list of components we’ve all learned to expect from the genre: Orphaned child—check. Antique clock—check. Missing will—check. And of course, the element of danger—check.
Although cousins Bess and George don’t team up with Nancy until book number four, they become a formidable trio of female sleuths for the remaining 159 and counting. As with all Nancy Drew books, the ghosts aren’t real, and there is always the reassuring happy ending. The most enduring mystery, however, is whether Nancy and her ever-present boyfriend, Ned, end up together.
Then there’s Gaudy Night, which at least one W insists is one of the most perfect books ever written. What list would be complete without the intrepid Harriet Vane? Watch out, Lord Peter Wimsey. Once Dorothy L. Sayers introduced crime writer Harriet—in the dock for murder!—in Strong Poison, the aristocratic detective lost both his heart and his place at the center of his own series. Harriet steals the show in Strong Poison, Have His Carcase, Gaudy Night, and Busman’s Honeymoon, but it’s really Gaudy Night, in which Harriet returns to her old Oxford College, where Harriet takes center stage, both as sleuth and at the heart of a female community, wrestling with the ever-present issue of how one manages both a heart and a head.
The interwar period may have been the Golden Age for mysteries, but Nancy Drew and Harriet Vane had plenty of heirs on both sides of the Pond. The 1980s saw Charlotte MacLeod’s twelve book Sarah Kelling series, set in Boston’s Beacon Hill. This impoverished descendant of generations of Boston Brahmins finds herself collecting corpses—and not just family skeletons. Fortunately for Sarah, she’s blessed with a multitude of marvelous older female relatives, from her redoubtable Aunt Emma, prima donna of her local Gilbert & Sullivan Society, to her found family: fortune teller Theonia and former bag lady turned philanthropist Mary. There’s no mystery she can’t solve with the help of these formidable ladies.
There are few series as long-running as Donna Andrews avian-themed Meg Langslow mysteries, starting with the brilliant Murder with Peacocks, in which blacksmith Meg Langslow reluctantly returns to her eccentric Virginia hometown to serve as maid of honor in no fewer than three weddings, but there’s more death than I do. Once again, it’s the women’s relationships that steal the show, from Meg’s Renaissance-obsessed best friend to her autocratic mother.
Speaking of mothers and daughters, Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon features another trio of female amateur detectives working together to solve a crime—in this case, murder. The three protagonists are a grandmother, a single mother, and her teenage daughter, all fiercely independent and strong-willed. When the youngest member of the team discovers a body while kayaking and finds herself the number one suspect, it is up to all three women to find the murderer and to learn how to depend on each other. What works so well in this book is not just the intriguing murder mystery, but also the emotional complexities of mother-daughter relationships. Love and forgiveness are an important backdrop to the whodunnit mystery, resulting in a satisfying read.
What list would be complete without mystery juggernaut, The Thursday Murder Club? There are all sorts of reasons this series lives up to the hype, from the dry humor to the genuine heart, but one of the best parts is the relationship between hard as nails former spy Elizabeth and warm-hearted retired nurse Joyce, who make the best sort of team. Sure, there are the guys, too: tough guy Ron and intellectual Ibraham, but we’re really here for the girl power duo of Elizabeth and Joyce.
If two female sleuths are good, why not add a third? The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood is funny, heartwarming and smart. 77-year-old crossword-setter Judith hears a neighbor being shot while she is skinny-dipping one night in the Thames. Unhappy with the police’s version of events, she teams up with an unlikely crew of sidekicks: over the top dogwalker Suzie and super-together Becks, the vicar’s wife. Yes, there’s tea at the vicarage (prepared by Becks with organic tea and artisanal homemade cakes), but this British cozy series stands out for the way the women’s friendship helps them all grow—and catch murderers, of course.
Before we go, we couldn’t resist darting forward a few months to February 2025, when Marie Benedict’s The Queens of Crime arrives in bookstores. We were lucky enough to preview this sparkling homage to interwar detective fiction, in which our favorite grandes dames of mystery—including Sayers, Orczy, and Christie herself—form a secret society to prove their chops by solving actual murders. Naturally, a doozy of a crime lands on their docket, involving a young English nurse abroad on an enigmatic excursion. Benedict brings both the twisty mystery and the legendary ladies to life with impeccable style, taking us full circle from the Golden Age and back again.
Clearly, we could go on and on… But we’ve hit our word limit! Who are your favorite female sleuths?
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