Blonde on blonde

Deadly blondes and dead blondes: Writing female-centred crime

In the wake of her latest YA novel, Trouble is my Business, local author Lisa Walker examines the entrenched gender stereotypes that once defined crime fiction – and how they can be dismantled.

I borrowed the title of my new book Trouble is my Business from a Raymond Chandler short story collection. Writing in the 1930s, Chandler was the master of the hardboiled crime fiction genre. I love Chandler’s pared-back writing and the dark atmosphere of his novels. But I am thrilled that crime fiction has moved on from onedimensional depictions of women. ‘All blondes have their points,’ muses Private Investigator Philip Marlowe, in Chandler’s The Long Goodbye. Chandler goes on to forensically describe seven types of blondes: ‘the metallic ones who are as blond as a Zulu under the bleach’; the ‘small, cute blonde’; the ‘big statuesque blonde’; the blonde who ‘smells lovely and shimmers’; and so on. Chandler’s female characters are either femme fatales or dead women – deadly blondes or dead blondes. This characterisation of women as either victims or villains is par for the course in noir crime novels. In the early days of crime fiction, being a detective was depicted as a hyper-masculine activity. As Chandler says, ‘A Hero, he is everything. He must be a complete

man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be the best man in the world and a good enough man for any world.’ Chandler’s Marlowe is a typical hardboiled crime fiction detective. He’s tough and unsentimental and has a good line in witty banter. He’s an honest detective in a dirty world, who’s driven by a quest for the truth. My protagonist, Olivia, is more screwball than hardboiled, but like Marlowe, she’s driven by a quest for truth. I’d like to think that she also does a good line in witty banter. Olivia does encounter several complicated blonds on the way to solving her case, but they are all of the male variety. There’s a hardcore surfer who argues with her in the surf, an acrobatic botany student who leaps over her head in a busking act at a Byron Bay market, and her irresistible ex-boss Rosco, who’s proving impossible to avoid. Add a charismatic cult leader to the mix and Olivia’s got a whole lot of trouble on her plate. Olivia owes more to Sue Grafton’s protagonist Kinsey Millhone, or Janet Evanovich’s mile-a-minute Stephanie Plum than she does to Philip Marlowe. When the first Kinsey Millhone book A is for Alibi came out in 1982, it paved the way for a deluge of female investigators who were just as hardboiled as their male counterparts. Like Kinsey Millhone, Olivia has little interest in fashion. Cargo pants and T-shirts take the place of Kinsey’s jeans and turtlenecks. She’s a get-on-withit type of girl – tough, smart, and ambitious:

My outfit of crumpled cargos and a worn-out T-shirt is not lawyer-in-training material.

I haven’t kept on top of my washing.

The first week of uni, Sophie had asked me if I was into normcore. I’d had to consult Google. It turned out the normcore fashion trend focuses on looking nondescript. Khaki cargo pants are in, colourful dresses are out. Designer purses are out, backpacks are in. It was me to a T. ‘Why yes, I am into normcore, thank you for asking,’ I’d replied. It was a revelation. I wasn’t fashion-challenged, as I’d thought. No, I was at the forefront of a cutting-edge trend.

Writing a female detective is not just a matter of changing genders. A woman’s experience in the workplace is different. Male PIs mostly seem to have no commitments whatsoever beyond their crime-solving duties. Sherlock Holmes is an unmarried loner, as is Philip Marlowe. Like many female sleuths, however, Olivia is handicapped by her family situation. Her parents have abandoned her to volunteer in a Nepali monastery, her seven-year-old little sister is delightful but demanding, and her grandmother is more interested in playing ukulele than helping with childcare. Olivia has to negotiate hard just to get down to Byron Bay and investigate:

After Jacq goes to bed, I try to figure out a way to ask Nan to look after her for the weekend, so I can go to Byron. Nan’s weekends are usually booked solid with social events, so it’s a big ask. ‘I’ve seen you on that dating app. Have you met a nice boy yet?’ Nan asks as we do the dishes. ‘No.’ My chances of meeting a nice boy on Bumble are nonexistent, since I never swipe right. ‘Why don’t you let me set you up with someone? My friend Maureen’s grandson …’

‘No. No way. Forget it.’ Nan’s tried to palm off the sociopath grandchildren of her friends on me before. I have no wish to spend another evening listening to a greasy-haired boy explain World of Warcraft. Suddenly I have a brainwave. ‘Actually, a nice boy asked me out to dinner in Byron Bay this weekend. It’s a shame I can’t go …’ It works like magic. Nan agrees to look after Jacq for the weekend.

Not only does Olivia need to look after her little sister, she also has to pass first-year law, and somehow persuade her parents to come back from Nepal. She is far too busy holding it all together to smell lovely and shimmer like a Chandler blonde.

Trouble is my Business is published by Wakefield Press.