PULP FICTION: THE DAMES
EDITED BY OTTO PENZLER
Quercus, 503pp, £14.99
Review by CLAIRE BLACKTHERE AIN'T NOTHING LIKE A Dame. Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote it and although I've never been a fan of that curiously homoerotic scen
e in South Pacific where a gaggle of semi-naked, tanned and greased sailors sing of their longing for women, it certainly captures the theme of Otto Penzler's fine anthology, Pulp Fiction: The Dames.
Hard-boiled detective fiction may once have been a quintessentially masculine genre, but it has long included a complex cast of heroines and femmes fatales and, in recent years, it has been the genre of choice for some of the finest women crime writers.
Penzler's collection of 23 stories returns to the golden age of pulp magazines – the 1930s and 1940s – but there's a clear lineage from the women who wisecrack their way through these pages to their contemporary counterparts. A varied, entertaining anthology, it works as a introduction to the genre – complete with overblown prose and outlandish plots – as well as being a treasure trove of hard-bitten characters (men and women) for detective fiction devotees. It's nothing less than you'd expect from Penzler, a man who is renowned as both a publisher and editor of mystery fiction.
Within the 500-odd pages of the collection you'll find recognisable names – Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett among them – but you'll also come across the lesser-known writers who plied their trade, writing for a penny a word or less, for weekly magazines that were at the height of their popularity during the 1930s. At the high end, there was Black Mask, Detective Fiction Weekly and Dime Detective which introduced such gumshoes as The Continental Op, Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade. At the lower end, the titles that would have been tucked in between the pages of another book to save the blushes of their reader, Spicy Detective, Gun Molls and Saucy Stories.
What unites Penzler's selection of stories is women. Or, rather, the molls, broads, cuties and, of course, dames that popped up sporadically often in supporting roles or as a curvaceous reward for the daring dick. The most famous of the pulp magazines, Black Mask, never published a story by a woman or featured a woman series character.
Women, when they do appear, are often damsels in distress just waiting to be rescued, or femme fatales, never to be trusted and always deserving of their usually violent end. Often their most prominent role in classic pulp is as the subject of titillating cover art, draped provocatively in sheath-like dresses usually ripped or dishevelled to ensure there's more than a hint of sexual availability. However, a greater crime than has ever been committed in the pages of a detective novel is the gross oversimplification to which the hard-boiled genre has been subjected. And Penzler's anthology is the proof.
Yes, the good guy is as impervious to physical harm and moral corruption as a superhero. Yes, the bad guys/gals get their just desserts. And yes, the prose is often melodramatic or even camp. But there's more to it than this and, happily, Penzler shows it.
It's not to say that there aren't a fair few boringly predictable women characters in here, but there are some nice surprises too: smart lawyers, feisty nightclub singers, daring women reporters. Not to mention jewel thieves, gang leaders and intrepid amateur sleuths.
A fine example is Cornell Woolrich's Angel Face, a woman who can drink gin with the best of them, carry off a silver satin evening gown like a movie star and spit a fine line in wisecracks. Then there's Irene in Eric Taylor's "A Pinch of Snuff", an orphan turned gang leader with revenge on her mind. Perhaps best of all, there's the doughty Sarah Watson, creation of BD McCandless, a woman whose "sturdily corseted body wrapped in nondescript, rusty black garments" belies the usual femme fatale physicality and whose talent with a .38 keeps her one step ahead of the hapless cops and villains she confronts.
Women in hard-boiled fiction may have been given severely circumscribed roles: victim, loyal assistant or eye candy. But there were those who broke the mould: the bona fide women detectives, usually amateur – although TT Flynn's Trixie Meehan and Stewart Sterling's intrepid Sergeant Helen Dixon are notable exceptions – who walked the mean streets, righting wrongs and catching crooks just like their male counterparts.
Within Penzler's assembled cast of feisty, fearsome and often ferocious women are the antecedents of the women detectives of contemporary crime fiction. And for women readers, despite the old-time chauvinism and the downright misogyny in these stories, there exists, as modern-day crime author Laura Lippman says in her introduction, "enough kink in these archetypes of girlfriend/hussy/sociopath to hint at the broader possibilities for the female of the species". Truly, there is nothin' you can name that is anythin' like a dame.
The full article contains 843 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
