Gasoline Books #9: Murder She Wrote
Mysteries are thrillers are attracting female authors and audiences. Why?
Last week, I fell down the rabbit hole otherwise known as TikTok. And, while ridiculous puppy-behaving-badly videos will always be my favorite way to procrastinate, I landed in a darker corner that day: survival TikTok. “New sex trafficking trick” cautioned one, “Safety tips for women!” blasted another. After about 20 minutes of deep scrolling, convinced I should never leave my house again, I made lunch and listened to a true crime podcast. Do I have creepy predilections? Definitely. But something tugged at my subconscious. During one of the podcast’s commercial breaks, I remembered a piece, that while it received high praise, was ultimately killed from a major magazine (shout out to publishing for keeping me humble), which I’m resurrecting here for this month’s longer newsletter. Scroll to the bottom for some book recommendations and other lit-links.
The pretty ones always died first. Thriller novels used to go something like this: Young, naïve, attractive girl meets the wrong end of a — enter terrible instrument here— and, after no-showing at work, school, whatever, is discovered by her sometimes-boyfriend. With some painstaking detective work (this is being generous), the male police office or private investigator in charge of the case would nail the boyfriend for a predictable twist. Occasionally the detective would collar the crook in an epic showdown. Or there’d be a stunning revelation in court by the unrelenting (male) prosecutor. It didn’t really matter. What mattered was the hopped-up masculinity of the work. The male assertion over morality. What mattered was that the good guys always won.
The victim: an afterthought. Tale as old as time.
Today, female authors have invaded the genre, reimagining both victimhood and heroism for eager audiences attracted to these modern mysteries. Brimming with authenticity — fear, rage, resilience — female authors are distilling everyday frights and fights and reflecting them back to women readers who may have their own stockpile of worries and injustices, frothing up interest to a fever pitch.
“So much of our [Crime Junkie] audience is women,” says Ashley Flowers, founder and CEO of podcast platform audiochuck, host of popular true crime podcast “Crime Junkie” and author of crime thriller, “All Good People Here.” “No one is speaking to women better than women. More and more, [female] authors have proved that the stories we have to tell will resonate with readers.”
With subject matter ranging from domestic violence to serial killers and unexpected heroines, there are endless options to match tastes and terrors. As such, the appetite for mystery, suspense, and thriller print books has been steadily on the rise — other than a decrease in 2022, possibly due to post-COVID reopenings — U.S. print book sales of the genre have posted positive upticks since 2015, according to NPD Bookscan, the gold standard of book sale stats. Further underscoring the success: Mysteries written by female authors have won the Goodreads Choice Awards for “Best Mystery and Thriller” for the past three years, “The Maid” by Nita Prose securing last year’s success. More than half of the 2022 Barnes & Noble “Best Mystery and Thriller Books” were written by women as well.
Who’s behind this growth? If mystery readers are anything like true crime fans, the readership leans female. In 2019, Spotify discovered that female listeners were clamoring to true crime podcasts in droves, with female listeners of the genre up 16 percent year over year. Truth or fiction, female readers and writers are seeking ways to process threats and fears, no matter the assailant.
“My initial way into the story was thinking about how terrible it would be to be on the cusp of something great happening in your life and then have it interrupted. It’s just a personal fear of mine,” author Jessica Knoll says of one of the main characters in her third novel, “Bright Young Women,” out next month. It was a similar anxiety Knoll herself experienced before the release of her first book, “Luckiest Girl Alive,” which informed this. Her newest book aims to reconcile the hulking amount of press a certain serial killer (last name Bundy, first name Ted) has received while his victims remained largely anonymous and misunderstood.
And it won’t be only readers who have had this extreme of misfortune with whom the book will resonate. Garden variety slights make their way into the book, too: Frosty thermostats set for a man’s comfort, nestled warmly in sport coats as women shiver under thin summer dresses. The saint-like tolerance demonstrated by the main character, despite diminutive men who flail at being stand-in daddies, lest they be on equal footing (or worse, subordinate) to a young woman. Knoll exquisitely captures double standards that women shoulder — while upping the stakes.
“Women are really good at telling these stories because we have our own experiences to pull from and that infuses the story with something that feels true and real,” Knoll continues. “Readers and viewers [positively] respond when the story feels real.”
Whether it be micro-humiliations or all-out homicide, books belonging to this genre speak to something that’s typically left unsaid: Being a woman can sometimes feel like you’re unwillingly carrying a bullseye on your back. To shake these fears — or prepare for them — readers are flocking to the mystery aisle for enjoyment, yes, but also as a relatively safe mechanism to process the low hum of unease that can infiltrate daily living.
It might not be entirely intentional, either: It could be biology. According to research published in a 2015 issue of medical journal, “Frontiers in Neuroscience,” humans have the most refined and responsive survival techniques of all mammals. But it’s how humans have climbed to the top of the food chain that’s possibly now getting reinterpreted and represented in the high interest of female readers for female-written mystery novels. Throughout the research, authors of the paper discovered that humans (and other mammals at varying levels of sophistication), learn the patterns of their predators to outwit them. Sound familiar?
While readers may not be fleeing from lions on a regular basis, threats of predators have anything but diminished. According to the National Coalition of Domestic Violence, “One in four women [in the U.S] experience severe intimate partner physical violence. One in five women in the U.S. have been raped in their lifetime.”
Further research into women’s fascination of true crime also speaks to this built-in tendency. Published in a 2010 issue of “Social Psychology and Personality Science,” researchers affirmed that women are likely drawn to true crime books to learn how to survive attacks, pick up escape tactics, and uncover crucial information to avoid a dangerous encounter. What safer way than to scour the pages of non-fiction, mystery, and thriller novels (and podcasts, too) to find out what not to do?
“I often see that women are the victim of these violent crimes. When I was first getting into true crime, yes, I wanted to solve a mystery, but I was always looking for what went wrong,” says Flowers. “‘How did that happen? Are there steps that I can take to protect myself? Things that I should avoid?’ There’s so much that I learned through that to help be more vigilant and protect myself. If this is why I was looking for information in true crime, I have to believe that someone else is, too.”
Contemporary literature is a byproduct of the time in which it is written. Nothing new. In fact, female-written mystery novels have long been a vehicle to address larger issues. Take, for example, the quintessential Nancy Drew series, initially penned by Mildred Wirt Benson under the pseudonym, Carolyn Keene. “The first book, ‘Nancy Drew and the Secret of the Old Clock,’ appeared only 10 years [1930] after the 19th amendment was passed granting women the right to vote,” explains Paula Connolly, MA, PhD, and English professor at University of North Carolina, Charlotte, who teaches courses on suspense and genre fiction, among other topics. Nancy Drew, while drenched in privilege due to her race and class, was a beacon of the agency young women might aspire to, given this new right.
Around the same time, Agatha Christie showcased older women as a force rather than a faux pas with her Miss Marple mystery series. “While Christie created both male and female protagonists, her female character Miss Marple countered stereotypes of frail-minded older women,” says Connolly. Mystery has been an opportunity to debunk stereotypes and push the narrative further, it would appear.
Given the political landscape, then, of the past 15 years, it should be no surprise that female authors have dominated the mystery, suspense and thriller genres. There’s plenty of fodder to be reworked into fiction. With the ongoing battle over a woman’s right to choose, the uptick in domestic violence during the pandemic, and the attack on LGTBQ+ rights throughout a bulk of the country, there are victims and survivors, heroes and demons, at every turn.
“A positive side effect of telling a good story is that it gives some weight perspectives that we haven’t gotten to see a lot of,” says Knoll. “Now, I think we are more and more [seeing stories] from the point of the more vulnerable and the victims. What draws me to a subject or story just happens to be something that can engender a sort of awareness around issues that are important. That’s a side effect of a story that I’m drawn to tell, because I’ve had my own traumatic experiences. I hope when people read [these books] it opens their eyes.”
To do so, the genre could benefit from ongoing diversification. Despite staggering statistics, trans people and people of color are mostly absent from the pages of these novels, both as victim and detective. “Trans people (16 and over) are victimized four times more than cisgender people,” says a study published in “American Journal of Public Health.” The 2010-2012 State Report of the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey confirmed that victims of color overwhelmingly outnumber white ones.
Fiction can’t solve real-life issues, but it can give a glimpse into other experiences to foster compassion and allyship. While new political policies may unfold at a glacial pace, the ongoing inclusion of different voices in literature doesn’t need to follow suit. The current political battle for gender equity is likely to continue well into the future, bolstering a built-in audience for female-written mysteries to pull back the veil on stereotypes and misunderstandings. And just maybe, no girl will have to die at all.
Female-Written Mysteries and Thrillers to Check Out
“Bright Young Women” - Jessica Knoll
“The Push” - Ashley Audrain
“The Glass Hotel” - Emily St. John Mandel
“The Elissas: Three Girls, One Fate, and the Deadly Secrets of Suburbia” - Samantha Leach
“Sharp Objects” - Gillian Flynn
“The Girls” - Emma Cline
“Our Missing Hearts” - Celeste Ng
“I Have Some Questions for You” Rebecca Makkai
Read Around the Book Web
Jay-Z Funds Anti-Book Ban Initiatives in New York (Black Enterprise)
The Best Korean Literature In Translation (Book Riot)
The Badassery of Texas Booksellers (Vulture)
Top Book I Read Last Month: “The Candy House” - Jennifer Egan