Otto Penzler: Dangerous Women

Often regarded as the finest crime writer alive (Newsweek said maybe the best ever), Elmore Leonard has had twenty consecutive best sellers, including Mr. Paradise, Tishomingo Blues, Pagan Babies and the short story collection When the Women Come Out to Dance. Numerous films have been made from his work: Hombre, 3:10 to Yuma, The Moonshine War, Stick, The Big Bounce, Get Shorty, Out of Sight and Jackie Brown. He has been named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America for lifetime achievement.

Three of the first four books Laura Lippman wrote were nominated for Edgar Allan Poe Awards, a feat unmatched in the history of the Mystery Writers of America; CharmCity won. The series of detective fiction novels featuring Tess Monaghan also won Shamus, Agatha and Anthony awards from the Private Eye Writers of America, and the Malice Domestic and Bouchercon conventions respectively.

Evan Hunter and Ed McBain are two best-selling novelists living in the same body. Hunter’s first adult novel, The Blackboard Jungle, shocked a nation, as did the wildly successful film made from it. As McBain, he has written more than fifty novels, including the iconic 87th Precinct novels, which essentially defined the police procedural for a half-century. Hunter also wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. He is a Grand Master and was the first American to be given a Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement by the (British) Crime Writers Association.

If a single writer could be held up to the light as the personification of cool and hip in the 1980s, it was Jay Mclnerney, who rode to instant stardom with his first book, Bright Lights, Big City. While he has seldom ventured into the world of crime fiction (unless you count drug use and abuse), his short story “Con Doctor” was selected for Best American Mystery Stories 1998.

Even if Bill Clinton had not told the media that Walter Mosley was his favorite mystery writer, the Easy Rawlins series would have been successful. It made its debut with Devil in a Blue Dress, which was nominated for an Edgar and then filmed with Denzel Washington and Jennifer Beals. As one of the most original voices in the world of crime fiction, Mosley has seen such Rawlins novels as Black Betty and A Little Yellow Dog make the New York Times best-seller list. He is a former president of the Mystery Writers of America.

Among the world’s most distinguished living authors, surely Joyce Carol Oates ranks as the greatest not to have won the Nobel Prize, although rumors abound that she has been short-listed several times. She has produced a wide variety of work at a prodigious rate, and it seems unlikely that any living American writer has received more accolades and awards, far too many to list here, but including six National Book Award nominations (including the winner, Them, in 1970) and three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Among her most recent books are Take Me, Take Me With You, Rape: A Love Story and The Tattooed Girl.

After writing and being rejected for twenty years, Anne Perry’s first novel, The Cater Street Hangman, was published in 1979. Since then, she has averaged more than a book a year, mainly the beloved Victorian-era detective novels that have put her on the best-seller list. The first series was about Inspector Thomas Pitt and his wife Charlotte, while the second is a darker series about Inspector William Monk. She won an Edgar for her short story, “Heroes,” which featured college professor and chaplain Joseph Reavley, now featured in a new series beginning with No Graves As Yet.

Not many crime writers make it into The Guinness Book of World Records, but Ian Rankin did when he had seven best sellers on the London Times list at the same time. He has won three Daggers from the (British) Crime Writers Association, two for short stories and one for Black and Blue, which was also nominated for an Edgar. His Inspector Rebus novels, beginning with Knots and Crosses in 1987, have served as the basis for a BBC television series. He was also one of the first winners of the prestigious Chandler-Fulbright Award.

S. J. Rozan’s novels about Lydia Chin and Bill Smith are among the most honored of recent years, winning Shamus, Anthony, Macavity and Edgar awards, with Winter and Night winning the Edgar for Best Novel in 2003 to join the statue of Poe she won for best short story. Lydia is a young American-born Chinese private eye whose cases mainly originate in the Chinese community, while Smith is an older, experienced PI who lives above a bar in Tribeca. They work together smoothly in carefully constructed (the author is, after all, an architect) plots, essentially taking turns as the dominant figure from book to book.

These giants of the mystery writing world have put together a bevy, a veritable harem, of dangerous women of all kinds. The gentler sex? Don’t make me laugh. And stay on guard, lest they win your heart, because they’d like to have it. Perhaps with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Otto Penzler

Why don’t we kill somebody?” she suggested.

She was a blonde, of course, tall and willowy and wearing a sleek black cocktail dress cut high on the leg and low at the neckline.

“Been there,” Will told her. “Done that.”

Her eyes opened wide, a sharp blue in startling contrast to the black of the dress.

“The Gulf War,” he explained.

“Not the same thing at all,” she said, and plucked the olive from her martini and popped it into her mouth. “I’m talking about murder.”

“Murder, uh-huh,” Will said. “Who’d you have in mind?”

“How about the girl sitting across the bar there?”

“Ah, a random victim,” he said. “But how’s that any different from combat?”

“A specific random victim,” she said. “Shall we kill her or not?”

“Why?” he asked.

“Why not?” she said.

Will had known the woman for perhaps twenty minutes at most. In fact, he didn’t even know her name. Her suggestion that they kill someone had come in response to a standard pickup line he’d used to good effect many times before, to wit: “So what do we do for a little excitement tonight?”

To which the blonde had replied, “Why don’t we kill somebody?”

Hadn’t whispered the words, hadn’t even lowered her voice. Just smiled over the rim of her martini glass, and said in her normal speaking voice, “Why don’t we kill somebody?”

The specific random victim she had in mind was a plain- looking woman wearing a plain brown jacket over a brown silk blouse and a darker brown skirt. There was about her the look of a harried file clerk or lower-level secretary, the mousy brown hair, the unblinking eyes behind what one had to call spectacles rather than eyeglasses, the thin-lipped mouth and slight overbite. A totally unremarkable woman. Small wonder she was sitting alone nursing a glass of white wine.

“Let’s say we do actually kill her,” Will said. “What’ll we do for a little excitement afterward?”

The blonde smiled.

And crossed her legs.

“My name is Jessica,” she said.

She extended her hand.

He took it.

“I’m Will,” he said.

He assumed her palm was cold from the iced drink she’d been holding.

On this chilly December evening three days before Christmas, Will had no intention whatever of killing the mousy little file clerk at the end of the bar, or anyone else for that matter. He had killed his fair share of people a long time ago, thank you, all of them specific random victims in that they had been wearing the uniform of the Iraqi Army, which made them the enemy. That was as specific as you could get in wartime, he supposed. That was what made it okay to bulldoze them in their trenches. That was what made it okay to murder them, whatever fine distinction Jessica was now making between murder and combat.