Why women writers rule the crime-ridden night

Women crime writers have an unnerving ability to bring great murder to life. Could it come from a very real awareness of the dangers lurking on darkened streets?

CASEY HILL is a marketing dream. Taboo, the debut novel, presses all the commercial buttons: it's a police procedural featuring a feisty young woman, the forensic investigator Reilly Steel, who travels from her native California to the mean streets of Dublin. Here, she finds herself the target of a resourceful serial killer, the tale given a frisson of sexual tension via Reilly's relationship with Garda Detective Chris Delaney.

So far, so good, but Casey Hill has more to offer. Casey Hill is the open pseudonym of husband-and-wife writing partnership Kevin and Melissa Hill. Young, attractive and media-friendly, the pair have an unusually strong publishing platform for debutants, given that Melissa Hill is the (self-described) author of eight bestselling chick-lit novels.

So what’s a chick-lit author doing dirtying her hands with crime fiction gore? The easy answer to that question is, “Capitalising on her established audience.” That may sound perverse, given that the perceived wisdom of commercial publishing is that when it comes to genre fiction, women prefer books that feature pink sparkly covers and kitten heels, whereas men tend to go for mayhem and murder.

The perceived wisdom couldn’t be further from the truth. As anyone who has ever attended a panel discussion, reading or signing will tell you, it’s very difficult to tell a reader’s preference simply by their appearance. The little old lady in the pearls and twin-set will pick up a hard-boiled title by Chelsea Cain; the bullet-headed man in the battered leather jacket will stroll away with an Agatha Christie. The man will be in the minority, however. When it comes to crime and mystery fiction readers, women vastly outnumber men.

Moreover, the writing partnership of Casey Hill is by no means unique. The Martin Beck series of 10 novels (1965-1975) by Swedish husband-and-wife team Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö remain hugely influential. Nicci French is the pseudonym for husband and wife team Sean French and Nicci Gerrard. Irish author Ingrid Black is a non-de-plume for husband-and-wife team Ian McConnel and Eilis O’Hanlon.

A quick glance at the crime fiction section in any bookshop will confirm that Ian Rankin wasn’t too far off the mark when he suggested some years ago that female crime writers aren’t just deadlier than the male, they’re equally capable of graphic portrayals of violence too. Karin Slaughter, Mo Hayder, Val McDermid, Kathy Reichs and Tess Gerritsen are just some of the bestselling female authors whose novels feature graphic violence, perpetrated as often as not against women.

One argument for the prevalence of such novels is that women, moreso than men, appreciate the reality behind crime novels in a more acute fashion. Which is to say that women grow up with a very real awareness of the dangers lurking on dark streets and down alleyways; of the potentially horrifying consequences of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong man. Who better to write crime fiction for a female audience than women, runs the theory, particularly when most crimes of violence in society are visited on women?

Thus it's entirely logical that Melissa Hill, with her established audience of women readers, should write a crime novel, and especially a crime novel which features a serial killer, that one-size-fits-all bogeyman of contemporary literature who is almost invariably feeding a sexual fetish as he preys on women, although Casey Hill's Taboooffers a neat twist on this convention-cum-cliché.

Moreover, Melissa Hill is by no means the first women's fiction writer to turn to crime fiction. Tess Gerritsen was first published by the romance imprint Harlequin, as was Karen Rose. There are also writers keen to blur the lines between crime and women's fiction. While authors such as Sara Paretsky and Patricia Cornwell have created critically acclaimed titles around hard-nosed feminists such as V I Warshawski and Kay Scarpetta, respectively, Janet Evanovich has built a bestselling career around her fashion-conscious, romance-hungry protagonist, Stephanie Plum. Evanovich "practically invented the sassy-girl crime novel" with One for the Money(1994), declared New York Timescrime critic Marilyn Stasio.

Evanovich no longer has the field to herself, as the crossover “chick-lit mystery” sub-genre continues to thrive in the US. According to chicklit.com, chick-lit mysteries “are almost always written by women for women and have a female lead. Chick-lit mysteries combine all the elements of a chick-lit novel with a crime, usually a murder, in which a principal character also takes on the role of amateur sleuth.”

So the next time you see a book cover adorned with a pair of killer heels, don’t jump to the obvious conclusion. You may well find yourself skewered by the business end of a stiletto.

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