Anyone read/used to read crime fiction?

[DeviTheGaelet]

I stopped for a while because of this board and how most thrillers feature inordinate violence to women by men.
I am just reading a series by Robert Bryndza and the "Night Stalker" is amazing at overturning a lot of those clichés about crime novels. I'm really loving it. Great range of characters and very fresh to read.
Anyone else read it? I hope more people do because it's great
Also are there any other more feminist crime novels?

[Poppyred85]

I really enjoyed the Robert Galbraith novels (J K Rowling's crime novelist pen name.) the victim in the first book is a woman but I don't recall it being particularly misogynistic or graphic and certainly the other two weren't.

[YonicProbe]

Enjoyed The Girl In The Ice, OP, now onto the next one (£1.99 on Kindle!)

[buzzbobboo]

I'm a crime fiction fan and need some feminist ones in my life! Do not touch Peter James! His books are so misogynistic.

Val McD is just way too graphic for me.

I love Ian Rankin. He's my all time favourite, and I've read many many crime authors. I'm due a re-read of PD James too.

Two Italian set series that are worth a try are

1. Donna Leon's Brunetti books set in Venice. He adores his very strong no bullshit wife and his two children and is a gentle man. Definitely less macho than many, though the stories are slightly more airport novwl than James and Rankin
   
   
2. Andrea Camilleri'S Montalbano novels set in Sicily. They can occasionally be graphic, but usually he doesn't siend ages describing the violence and this is more than balanced by the subtle wry humour and descriptions of amazing Italian food. Very well written too, up there with my favourites.
   
   There are at least 20 of each series so plenty to keep you going!

[kesstrel]

Laurie King has written a number of books featuring a young woman named Mary Russell, with a strongly feminist bent, set from around 1915 onward. Sherlock Holmes is also involved, and a young Peter Wimsey makes an appearance at one point. They are very well written, and the period detail is very good. The Beekeeper's Apprentice is the first in the series.

[paddypants13]

Isay yes, she is. The first one is Agatha Raisin and The Quiche of Death.

She also wrote Hamish Macbeth.

[PinkSwimGoggles]

tess gerritson?
not the rizzoli ones or the early romance ones, but the free-standing novels (gravity, glow)

[Northernlurker]

I enjoyed Joan Smith's Loretta Lawson mysteries. Sara Paretsky, early Val McDermid. Margery allingham is pretty good too actually.

[ISaySteadyOn]

paddy, is M C Beaton the author of the Agatha Raisin series? If she is, and you've read them, what's the first one?

[paddypants13]

I would definitely recommend the Jackson Brodie books by Kate Atkinson. I love them!

I like "gentle" crime novels. Agatha Christie and M C Beaton.

[Frouby]

I like Tana French too. And really enjoyed the Vera series by Anne Cleeves if it's strong female roles you like. The victims are usually female but nothing too gory or gratuitous. The Shetland series by Cleeves is pretty gentle too. Proper old fashioned murder mystery with characters rather than gore central to the story. And usually the victims are more important than the murderer.

[EmpressOfTheSevenOceans]

Yes, love Kinsey Millhone.

[KanyesVest]

I was going to suggest the Sue Grafton alphabet series, PD James and Ruth Rendell. I find gratuitous violence against women in so many police procedural increasingly difficult, and like you mentioned Senaca, I disliked it about the later Scarpetta books. Also like Tana French, good mix of male and female characters and not too dark.

[SenecaFalls]

Olenna I really like Shroud for a Nightingale, one of PD James's earlier works. It's the one I re-read most often.

I loved Patricia Cornwell's earlier Scarpetta books, but her vision just seem to get darker and darker in her later books and I stopped reading them.

[OlennasWimple]

I can't get to grips with PD James - can anyone recommend a really good one to try again?

Agatha Christie is remarkably non-sexist in terms of murder victims and perpetrators

More modern, I also like the Kay Scarpetta books by Patricia Cornwell

[YonicProbe]

Josephine Tey, or, for more female led novels, the Nicola Upson books in which Tey is a character

[SenecaFalls]

I wish she and PD James had been immortal.

Oh yes. I'm fond of Rendell's Wexford, too.

Both Rendell and James are great for re-reading. And from an earlier time, Dorothy Sayers. I went through her canon again last year.

[EmpressOfTheSevenOceans]

I loved Val McDermid's early books (Lindsay Gordon & Kate Brannigan series). Strong female characters, nothing too gratuitous, men & women equally likely to be victims. I just haven't wanted to read her later ones.

[ISaySteadyOn]

Ha! Knew those were the responses I'd get to Sophie Hannah, but suppose they are my guilty pleasure.

Yes, Barbara Vine was Ruth Rendell's pen name. I wish she and PD James had been immortal. Could have used more Dalgliesh.

[PinkSwimGoggles]

isn't barbara vine ruth rendel's pen name?

[DeviTheGaelet]

miffer you might like these, they are throwaway but there is more diversity in all the characters including victims!

[Miffer]

I am irrationally attracted to books called "The Something/ Someone's Something/Someone" and put off books called "The Something of Something"

So weird I am the opposite, daughter/son/boy/wife at the end of anything puts me straight off.

[Miffer]

Sophie Hannah is bloody awful, that Culver Valley series is like a literary version of the "White People Problems" Meme.

I used to like 'throwaway' crime fic but got sick of the seeming unending escalation of gratuitous violence inflicted on women in the books. I have read books were women have had ribs removed and... actually the worst example of this I don't want to repeat here.

That said I really enjoy the Charlie Parker books, they are a bit odd as they have heavy themes of the supernatural/mystical in them but tend to have a straight up mystery at the centre. They are very violent though.

[LastGirlOnTheLeft]

No, I only read true crime by Ann Rule really. She is extremely victim-conscious.....she treats the perp like a pile of shit and really delves into the history and humanity of the victim.

[LassWiTheDelicateAir]

The first is Bootlegger's Daughter

I am irrationally attracted to books called "The Something/ Someone's Something/Someone" and put off books called "The Something of Something"

For exaample Barbara Vine's The Chimney Sweeper's Boy -( very good) Stef Penny's The Tenderness of Wolves (terrible)

[Xenophile]

Did anyone see the TV adaptation of The Mermaids Singing? That was grim enough, there's no way I'd want to read the bits I fast forwarded over.