Deadlier Than The Male: An Investigation into Feminine Crime Writing

by Jessica Mann

Writer Jessica Mann asks: ''Why are respectable English women so good at murder?'' Her book, ''Deadlier Than the Male,'' attempts to answer the question. The first half examines historical and theoretical issues; the second half offers short critical biographies of leading mystery writers, among them Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers.

Genres: Nonfiction, Reference, Mystery, British Literature

246 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Crime-writer Jessica Mann was born in London, England in 1937. She studied archaeology at Cambridge University and Law at Leicester University.

She is the author of a non-fiction book, Deadlier Than the Male: An Investigation into Feminine Crime Writing, about female crime writers from Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers to Ngaio Marsh. She contributes reviews and feature articles to many newspapers and magazines, is a regular broadcaster on TV and radio and tours regularly promoting her books at events and festivals.

Jessica Mann lives with her husband, an archaeologist, in Cornwall. Her latest book is The Mystery Writer (2006).

Reviews

[Damaskcat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published in 1981 and reissued as an e-book in 2015 with an additional preface, this remains a fascinating examination of why women have excelled at writing crime fiction and why those books are still in print more than half a century after they were first published. The author concentrates on five authors - Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh and Josephine Tey. The first part of the book looks at the Golden Age of crime fiction and addresses the question of why much of the work written in that era by men has not survived as well as the work by these five authors.

The author suggests that the work has survived partly because it does not depict graphic violence but concentrates on the investigation of the crime. Christie did not concern herself with the psychology of the detective or the criminal and to some modern readers her work seems lightweight. Sayers started off with two dimensional series characters but gradually fleshed out Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane into three dimensional people. Marsh again is more like Christie in that she concentrates on the crime and the investigation. Allingham creates a mystery in the characters and background of Albert Campion who operates all the time under a pseudonym and whose parents and early life are never revealed. Tey, much less prolific than the other four, did not always deal with murder in her books.

The second part of the book provides brief biographical sketches of the five authors though as the preface to this 2015 edition says some of that information has since been proved incorrect as more is known about the authors' lives than was known at the time the book was originally published. There are short bibliographies of books mentioned in the text and consulted by the author in her research for the book which would be a good starting point for anyone wanting to read the work of the these five authors.

If you enjoy reading books about books then you will enjoy this one.

[Cloud · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit of a messy overview of crime fiction and major women writers in the first half and a series of women writers in the second half.
I thought the biographies included profiles of the authors' serial protagonist because Mann starts the section going at great lenghts to defend the reading of a novel in relation to the biography of the author, but it's just the biographies without any novels or characters involved. I was disappointed by that.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actual rating 3.5 stars

The author provides a good, and at times humorous, discussion of the English murder mystery. The biographies of five women who wrote in the genre are concise and informative.

[Helen Geng · Rating 2 out of 5]

Uneven, unsatisfactory, unconvincing. Also dated.

Read March 2024

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

For my full review click on the links below:
Part 1
https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress...
Part 2
https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress...