Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky - Chicken and Egg?
Willow
Grafton and the V.I. Warshawski novels by Sara Paretsky. Talk about
similar! Both series are rather good, but I really have to wonder at
the parallels:
1. Both feature female private detectives.
2. Both detectives live close to elderly males who play a major part
of their social life.
3. Both detectives have prior legal careers, one in law, the other in
police.
4. Both detectives are roughly the same age.
5. Both detectives run in the mornings.
6. Both detectives are divorced.
7. Both are "hard boilied"...
And on it goes...
So I checked the dates of publication. The thirteen books by Paretsky
started with "Indemnity Only" in 1982. Sue Grafton published "A is
for Alibi" also in 1982. I can't tell the months to determine which
came firs - but an article says Paretsky by a nose.
I happened to read "T is for Trespass" just before I read P{aretsky's
Guardian Angel" Perhaps as both deal with abuse of the elderly, the
similarities are striking. Sue, it happens. Dan Brown and Lewis
PErdue comes to mind, although certain I do not suggest that either
followed the lead of the other.
Heck, two good series to read. Who would complain?
Willow
K Barrett
Both were preceeded by Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone by a good 4-5
years, female private eye with a cop background. Reading those in order
just to get past the whole embarassing 'papoose' period and you have a
decent chronicle not only of the female protagonist, but also of recent
N Calif and SF history.
K Barrett
barbara fister
> On 1/31/2010 7:19 PM, Willow wrote:
>> I recently started to read two series, the Alphabet books by Sue
>> Grafton and the V.I. Warshawski novels by Sara Paretsky. Talk about
>> similar! Both series are rather good, but I really have to wonder at
>> the parallels:
<snip>
> Both were preceeded by Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone by a good 4-5
> years, female private eye with a cop background. Reading those in order
> just to get past the whole embarassing 'papoose' period and you have a
> decent chronicle not only of the female protagonist, but also of recent
> N Calif and SF history.
> K Barrett
And all three were instrumental in reviving the PI tradition with a
feminist bent, though Muller should get credit for getting there first.
(Liza Cody started the first female PI series in the UK with Dupe in
1980, so she was an early starter, too.) I suspect if there are
parallels in the plot line, they probably map to what was on people's
minds and in the headlines as major social issues that year. Of course
Grafton's series remains set in the past, but she's not sticking with
1980s headlines. That would be weird.
At Liza Cody's site she says this about her Anna Lee series:
"At the very beginning all I wanted to do was to avoid my freezing,
uninsulated studio, and look busy by the fire.
"I hadn't read a lot of detective fiction - just Raymond Chandler,
Dashiell Hammett and Ross McDonald - but I'd enjoyed the pace and the
writing. I did, however, have very serious doubts about their views of
women. On top of that part of the attraction was the US itself, which
seemed like an exotic location where gunplay and casual violence were
plausible; not at all like England which breeds a different kind of
nastiness altogether.
"It made me wonder what would happen to an ordinary, competent English
woman who happened to be a detective; someone who went unarmed, used the
Yellow Pages a lot and got hurt when she was hit.
"So I started small: I fitted an ex-police woman, Anna Lee, into a small
detective agency on Kensington High Street and gave her an unimportant
case. Then, sort of like a reader, I waited to see what happened.
"I'm a feminist and I tend to believe that ordinary, competent women can
change the world if they want to. But back in the late '70s, early '80s
it was as if they had to wait for male permission.
"Anna was a woman who was somewhat damaged by living and working in a
man's world; she probably wouldn't have called herself a feminist - she
would've just worked twice as hard and tried to be twice as good as the
guys in order to be thought of as not quite equal.
"So the book, Dupe, as it developed, was never intended as a polemic.
But it was intended to be a feminist story: to show the slights, insults
and restrictions that ordinary, competent, intelligent women faced every
day, especially those who worked in what at the time was seen as a man's
world - a detective agency."
barfly
Old Beeg
kill off her ex. She had done writing in Hollywood and had two
previous books published some years earlier. Paretsky has an MBA, and
a Ph.D in history. Some of the TV shows popular in the year or so
before publication of the two books (January for Paretsky, April for
Grafton), were: Charlie's Angels, Dallas, Dukes of Hazzard, Dynasty,
Magnum, P.I. and M*A*S*H.
My understanding of book publishing is that it takes about a year to
get a book into print, so it's unlikely they were copying each other.
It's more likely that they independently came up with story lines that
happened to have independent female protagonists.
Beeg
(who will quibble about point 3 and say that police work is law
enforcement, not actually a legal career)
K Barrett
I haven't read any of the Anna Lee series but I have two or three of the
Monkeywrench series as well as 'Gimme More' a stand alone, books with
really atypical characters and are enjoyable reads. I understand Cody's
now somewhere in the US midwest part of a midwest crime writer's group
but not writing. I've stopped looking for her books. Pity.
Warshawsky, on the other hand, always seemed to be just a bit too
contrived, the hard drinking female PI in the old school vein. The
first 3 were good after that, while I read them none of them had the
same thrall as her getting dumped in dead stick swamp rolled in a carpet.
Current characters I like are Lena Gamble, Stella Mooney and grrrr I'd
have to look it up, but they are women just trying to get along and do
their jobs.
K Barrett
family
Now they could get away with a lot of racial slurs, but not profanity.
They could also be very condescending about women.
Today writers can use a lot of profanity, but very little in the way of
racial slurs.
And they are more patronizing about men.
As the old saying goes;
"The things change the more they stay the same"
Janet
>
> I haven't read any of the Anna Lee series but I have two or three of
> the Monkeywrench series as well as 'Gimme More' a stand alone, books
> with really atypical characters and are enjoyable reads.
I would strongly recommend reading the Anna Lee books, which have long been
favorites of mine. I infinitely prefer them to the Eva the wrestler series.
I often wonder why she isn't writing any more.
Lone Wolf
dbab87...@t34g2000prm.googlegroups.com:
When I read Karen Kijewsky's Kat Colorado series I was struck by how
similar she was to Grafton's Kinsey Millhone (I haven't read any
Paretsky). I actually stopped reading them because of the similarity. I
really like Grafton, although I'm usually 2 or 3 books behind the
current one.
--
Lone Wolf
Annie C
"family" <brit...@bresnan.net> wrote in message
news:jsidnetOUJV0s_rW...@bresnan.com...
Annie
Rik Shepherd
> I would strongly recommend reading the Anna Lee books, which have long
> been favorites of mine. I infinitely prefer them to the Eva the wrestler
> series.
>
> I often wonder why she isn't writing any more.
She did at least one stand-alone didn't she? Maybe two? With names that I
can't remember. One of them was about the music industry...
She stopped writing Anna Lee (except as a walk-on in the Eva series)
apparently* because she didn't like the TV adaptation. P.D. James gave the
same reason** for stopping the Cordelia Gray books when the TV Cordelia had
a child out of wedlock (this was entirely the fault of the actress). Both
Cody and James seem to have thought that the TV will always beat the book in
a fight, and that viewers will be horribly upset to find differences between
an adaptation and the source it was adapted from. This strikes me as rather
depressing.
*apparently here meaning I'm sure I heard it on Radio 4 ages ago...
** for the sake of clarity - P.D. James stopped writing Cordelia Gray
because of the Cordelia Gray series not because of the Anna Lee series.
That would just be overly weird.
barbara fister
> Janet wrote .
>
>> I would strongly recommend reading the Anna Lee books, which have long
>> been favorites of mine. I infinitely prefer them to the Eva the wrestler
>> series.
>>
>> I often wonder why she isn't writing any more.
>
> She did at least one stand-alone didn't she? Maybe two? With names that I
> can't remember. One of them was about the music industry...
She has a new US edition of Gimme More out, I think - not quite in time
for Bouchercon, alas. It came out in the UK in 2001! I moderated a panel
with her and Paretsky. Strange panel, but he was charming and the book
sounded interesting. I love the Eva Wylie books.
barfly
Willow
> Warshawsky, on the other hand, always seemed to be just a bit too
> contrived, the hard drinking female PI in the old school vein. The
> first 3 were good after that, while I read them none of them had the
> same thrall as her getting dumped in dead stick swamp rolled in a carpet.
Having just finished one Warshawsky book (not an early one), I have to
agree that she seems too farfetched for me. I really got tired of her
elderly neighbour, the coincidences seem to endless and the text
seemed to drag a bit. None of those comments applies to the Grafton
books which continue to both amuse and entertain.
Willow
Janet
Willow, Paretsky started off very strong, went into a middle period during
which--IMHO--she was spinning her wheels, and then took off again with the
novel about private prisons. It sounds as if you may have hit the middle
period on your first try.
I suggest trying again at the beginning.
I read one Grafton and found it, shall we say, a featureless landscape. One
of these days I might try again.
Chris F.A. Johnson
> Willow wrote:
>> On Feb 1, 7:56 am, K Barrett <mormo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Warshawsky, on the other hand, always seemed to be just a bit too
>>> contrived, the hard drinking female PI in the old school vein. The
>>> first 3 were good after that, while I read them none of them had the
>>> same thrall as her getting dumped in dead stick swamp rolled in a
>>> carpet.
>>
>> Having just finished one Warshawsky book (not an early one), I have to
>> agree that she seems too farfetched for me. I really got tired of her
>> elderly neighbour, the coincidences seem to endless and the text
>> seemed to drag a bit. None of those comments applies to the Grafton
>> books which continue to both amuse and entertain.
>
> which--IMHO--she was spinning her wheels, and then took off again with the
> novel about private prisons. It sounds as if you may have hit the middle
> period on your first try.
Grafton went through a similar phase. 'H' and 'I' are her weakest
books.
> I suggest trying again at the beginning.
>
> I read one Grafton and found it, shall we say, a featureless landscape. One
> of these days I might try again.
--
Chris F.A. Johnson <http://cfajohnson.com>
Author: =======================
Pro Bash Programming: Scripting the GNU/Linux Shell (2009, Apress)
Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress)
K Barrett
[Snork!] Nobody, unless of course the man's a liberal congressman trying
to cut the defense budget in a Vince Flynn book. *G*
K Barrett
K Barrett
what's up with that? Emeritus status? *G* Maybe she's lurking or has
the same google bots that catch her name and she'll de-cloak and tell
us. Lisa, We want More.
K Barrett
Janet
I checked out her web site and it says she lives in or near --can't recall
which-- Bath.
Willow
> I suggest trying again at the beginning.
I shall, soon as I can find a copy.
> I read one Grafton and found it, shall we say, a featureless landscape. One
> of these days I might try again.
I find her amusing, better that the departed Parker. And much nicer
to read than Evanchuk...
Willow
K Barrett
could have sworn she was in that same writing group with Carl Brookins
and Wm Kent Kruger....
They say the memory is the first thing to go and also the memory is the
first thing to go.
K Barrett
barbara fister
> [bwuh?] Am I on drugs? Maybe she was here just for an extended stay. I
> could have sworn she was in that same writing group with Carl Brookins
> and Wm Kent Kruger....
Perhaps you're thinking of Ellen Hart? She still hangs out with those guys.
Barfly