If you’ve run through your supply of mysteries featuring smart, competent women private eyes, here are a few more for you to try. It includes two lawyer-sleuths.
I’ve never really considered such hybrids private eyes since they have another income source, but Private Eye Writers of America accepts them as P.I.’s, so it’s hard to quibble. Plus the plain truth is, I’m a fan of the ones listed here:
Arapaho Lawyer
Vicky Holden, lawyer protagonist of an extensive series by Margaret Coel, is a woman well-versed in two worlds. She’s Arapaho, but has lived for a decade in the outside world before returning to the Wind River reservation and her people. Cases take her across the reservation, through the vast, bleak distances surrounding it, and into Denver. It’s great to be able to truly visualize a setting. I can with this series because from age eight until graduating from college I lived in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and had an Arapaho friend from the reservation who visited me.
Baltimore Attorney
On the other side of the country, Baltimore, Maryland, is the setting for one of my favorite detectives, Sam (Stephanie Ann) McRae, the creation of NY Times best-selling author Debbi Mack. Sam also is a lawyer, a tough, gritty one who can hold her own in rough blue-collar neighborhoods as well as snooty ones. One of the reason I like her is her empathy for others and her understanding of human foibles. There are four books in the series, but a new publisher (WildBlue Press) has begun reissuing them, and not all show on Amazon just yet.
British Private Investigator
Finally, there’s a fine woman private eye who works at that alone. She’s Kate Shackleton, a young World War I widow, and the series featuring her is the creation of British author Frances Brody. Kate’s widowhood allows her a goodly measure independence without making her unbelievable in her time period. She’s intelligent, resourceful and doesn’t scare easily. She owns her own home in a small village, but her cases take her not only through the countryside but into London. She owns and drives a car, and is a skilled photographer. If you like classic British detective novels or American P.I. yarns, I predict you’ll like Kate.
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If you haven’t tried the Maggie Sullivan mysteries, you can read the first book in the series FREE
A .38, a nip of gin and sensational legs get 1940s private investigator Maggie Sullivan out of most scrapes, until a stranger threatens to bust her nose, she’s hauled in on suspicion of his murder and she finds herself in the cross-hairs of a sadistic crime boss.