A Victorian-era book featuring a lady detective! Inspired by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
calvinahobbes' long-ago list of recommendations of such. The books on Calvina's list are all among the earliest examples of female detectives written by female authors and I thought it would be fun to give one a try. The first one I tried is the one by Baroness Orczy as that's the only author on the list I recognized, but in retrospect that was the wrong choice because I already know how sexist and classist and antisemitic Orczy is. I gave up on that book by shortly into the second chapter the instant a character was compared to Orczy's usual idea of Jewish people. I don't need to put up with more of that crap. I might love Orczy's most famous book but it is rather in spite of the author, not because of...!
And then I just chose one of the other books on Calvina's public domain lady detective list at random, and came up with this one about Loveday Brooke. And it turned out to be genuinely worth the read. It's is a collection of short stories in which a professional lady detective inspects the details of a case, comes up with the solution much faster than anyone expects, and then explains everything about what was actually going on and how she figured it out when nobody else could.
Each story deliberately hides details from the reader in the first section, such that you wouldn't be able to solve the puzzles along with Loveday. Which I gather is against the rules of "fair play" in detective fiction, but also this book predates those so-called rules so you can't blame the author for it. And it makes for a pleasant read in my opinion because there's none of the stress on the forgetfully-inclined reader of being bothered with keeping track of a million different Clues to try to figure out what details are worth remembering. I also appreciate that most of the mysteries aren't murder mysteries, which also lowers the drama. (Can you tell that I am not the usual audience of mysteries?)
You don't get to see much of the actual character of who Loveday is, unfortunately - the stories are much more interested in showing how clever Loveday is for figuring everything out than portraying her as a well-rounded human, but you know, I can forgive the book that, because it's nice to see a book of its era where a woman's main character trait is Good At Her Job That's Usually Considered Men-Only.
The book does contain undertones of various unfortunate prejudices of the era (like the idea of it being most appropriate to marry within your class), but never in a way that feels actively hateful like Orczy can be, and this book even occasionally refutes certain prejudices, like the idea of a criminal physiognomy.
And the book does a nice job of setting out a collection of interesting characters for each story and a mystery I wanted to know the answer to.
Overall an enjoyable read and the right kind of detective book for a reader like me. Possibly not the sort of book that would be appealing to people whose main reading diet is modern-style mysteries though!
calvinahobbes' long-ago list of recommendations of such. The books on Calvina's list are all among the earliest examples of female detectives written by female authors and I thought it would be fun to give one a try. The first one I tried is the one by Baroness Orczy as that's the only author on the list I recognized, but in retrospect that was the wrong choice because I already know how sexist and classist and antisemitic Orczy is. I gave up on that book by shortly into the second chapter the instant a character was compared to Orczy's usual idea of Jewish people. I don't need to put up with more of that crap. I might love Orczy's most famous book but it is rather in spite of the author, not because of...!And then I just chose one of the other books on Calvina's public domain lady detective list at random, and came up with this one about Loveday Brooke. And it turned out to be genuinely worth the read. It's is a collection of short stories in which a professional lady detective inspects the details of a case, comes up with the solution much faster than anyone expects, and then explains everything about what was actually going on and how she figured it out when nobody else could.
Each story deliberately hides details from the reader in the first section, such that you wouldn't be able to solve the puzzles along with Loveday. Which I gather is against the rules of "fair play" in detective fiction, but also this book predates those so-called rules so you can't blame the author for it. And it makes for a pleasant read in my opinion because there's none of the stress on the forgetfully-inclined reader of being bothered with keeping track of a million different Clues to try to figure out what details are worth remembering. I also appreciate that most of the mysteries aren't murder mysteries, which also lowers the drama. (Can you tell that I am not the usual audience of mysteries?)
You don't get to see much of the actual character of who Loveday is, unfortunately - the stories are much more interested in showing how clever Loveday is for figuring everything out than portraying her as a well-rounded human, but you know, I can forgive the book that, because it's nice to see a book of its era where a woman's main character trait is Good At Her Job That's Usually Considered Men-Only.
The book does contain undertones of various unfortunate prejudices of the era (like the idea of it being most appropriate to marry within your class), but never in a way that feels actively hateful like Orczy can be, and this book even occasionally refutes certain prejudices, like the idea of a criminal physiognomy.
And the book does a nice job of setting out a collection of interesting characters for each story and a mystery I wanted to know the answer to.
Overall an enjoyable read and the right kind of detective book for a reader like me. Possibly not the sort of book that would be appealing to people whose main reading diet is modern-style mysteries though!
