From Sidekick to Savvy Sleuth: A Study of American Female Detectives

This essay examines how the traditional character of the ”good” woman in hardboiled detective fiction has evolved from a sisterly or docile companion to the detective to one taking up her own role of as a sleuth. It first explores the portrayals of Effie Perine in Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, Anne Riorden, in Chandler's Farewell My Lovely, and Betty Jo Siddon in Ross Macdonald's The Blue Hammer, analyzing how these women, while maintaining traditional feminine attributes of loyalty and a degree of subservience, illustrate a noticeable degree of independence, intelligence and even some of the hard-boiled qualities bestowed upon their male counterparts. These aspects of their characters thus herald the creation of hardboiled woman detectives. The essay goes on to use Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski as a comparative example. By measuring these characters against their male counterparts such as Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer, it becomes apparent that these women detectives are necessarily imbued with feminist qualities which allow them to better resist traditional ideas of femininity and domesticity.