Today, I finished reviewing my short story Dead: D.W.I. Driver Who's Indiscrete. It is a Samantha Cochran story and a prequel to the Sam-Cat mystery series, as Sam is still on the police force for this murder mystery. The work I have just completed, made me ruminate about how over five years ago, I started to write a hard boiled, female detective series. I have written several short stories and 1 full manuscript with another manuscript a completed rough draft. I present my thought patterns for review.
When I first thought about writing a hard boiled detective mystery, I initially decided that I wanted to change the paradigm of a lone male wolf detective, In particular, I wanted to escape the cliche of a jaded world-weary cigarette-smoking stubbled-face stoic with a weapon, who lives alone and does not want to have a friend, because friend would be too much effort and impose on his lifestyle.
Also, I believe in today's society, a female is able to be as good a detective as any male. I believe that a female can do most anything as well as a man, as evidence I offer the U.S. Woman's National Soccer team which has had more world wide success than the men's. In support of that cause, I have written a female detective and given her a motive for her life style, attitude and her adventure in the life of a private eye. Giving her enthusiasm and emotions, as well as determination to prove that a woman can function as a detective, because that is what she wants to do. Dorothy Kenyon when she was a teenager (in the early twentieth century), asked her father who was a lawyer., if a woman could. become one. His answer was classic, "Why not?" I feel the same way.
I quickly decided that the cliche of a motherless daughter raised in an all male family would work as her backstory, even if it sounded clichic. I wanted her to have valid reason for being her choice of becoming a private investigator. So she grew to be a woman who wanted to be a cop, like all the males in her family. However, the glass ceiling and the male wall of silence would force her to become a private eye. She met the level of anti-feminism that existed (?still exists?) in the male oriented world like law enforcement. I cannot state that today's police anywhere act in this fashion. I am writing fiction, and my fictitious world is not completely irrelevant (has some relationship) to the real world.
Harassment, bias, and a glass ceiling remain present today, and are documented in our recent past - Matt Lauer, Andy Lack, and Harvey Weinstein although not in law enforcement but... The military just reported sexual assaults against female soldiers dropped 3% in 2019. This was a smaller percentage drop than 2018, but in 2019 just under 1,400 assaults were reported. This does not included verbal harassment and intimidation. It also excludes those assaults that went unreported. This adds credence to my artistic concept.
So to those who say, my stories seem exaggerated, I say, in the male world of law enforcement and military forces, women still have to tread lightly. I also think that if you read the newspaper, you will find Sam's motivation to leave the police force rings true. So maybe my presentation is not so much cliche, but fictitious fact, a form of docu-fiction. However, all this first came to be in my mind and once it was on paper, the news of the world made my logic more reasonable.
I needed someone to employ Sam to do the detective work. This added the opportunity to have a second woman - a lawyer - assume an important role in the story. So, I have a narrator who is a female hard boiled detective and a side kick who is a lawyer as well as rich. My side kick is name Allyson Catherine Worthington. She is the daughter of an international industrial magnate. We added to the fun of conflict by making Sam lower middle class economically as might be expected since her father was the sole support of his family, which include Sam plus two brothers. Allyson goes by her middle name, Catherine, and has her own angst that even money cannot repair. This sets up basic class conflict between them. They are both loners, who have suffered a close and extreme family loss.
The short story offered here at this time, is before Sam leaves the police force and before Catherine and she join forces. However, what I find most interesting, from an author's stand point, is that while I did not try to update or re-establish in a female world the Nero-Archie-relationship, and the two women, Sam and Cat, while less cordial than Nero and Archie, still possess some of the tradings of my early exposure to mystery writing. I did re-create similarities to my old favorite, Nero Wolfe on purpose, but the mind will have what the mind wants.
I expect in the next two days, I will publish on this blog the first installment of Dead: D.W.I. Driver Who's Indiscrete.
L.A. Preschel
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