Why do women make such good crime novelists?
I am not sure whether women would still be pre-eminent if we examined the whole spectrum of crime writing, but they certainly do excel in the traditional classical detective story. This may be because women have an eye for detail and clue-making demands attention to the minutiae of everyday living. Women, too, are interested in emotions and motives rather than in fast action and weaponry. It may be that women find the formal construction of the detective story psychologically supportive, so that we are able to deal within this structure with violent events which we might not so confidently tackle in the so-called straight novel.
