Henrietta Hay's Column

The world is divided into two kinds of people: those who read mysteries and those who read science fiction. I'll grant you that there are other distinctions among humans, but this is a biggie! I'm a mystery fan myself.

But I have in my immediate family and my close circle of friends mostly science fiction fans. They want their imaginations free to wander about unbound by earth or earthly cares. Never mind that Science Fiction has its own genres including space opera, swords and sorcery and fantasy, each with its own rules. These are people who want intellectual stimulation - who want their minds to go where no mind has gone before.

But mysteries - now that's something else. Mysteries do follow a general pattern, but they have wonderful variety and are often quite well written - and you don't have to think. The basic pattern is that there are good guys (gals) and bad guys (gals) and the good guys (gals) almost always win. There is usually a murder, or two or three or more. Sometimes there is lots of blood, but it is generic blood and doesn't bother you as it does in a movie.

Within the mystery group, all of us have our favorite authors and characters. As a hardened feminist, it is not surprising that I like female sleuths. And oh what a variety of them we have. There are no stereotypes here.

The first female mystery writer that I have read extensively over the years is Dorothy Sayers. Her main character is Lord Peter Wimsey, that unbelievably sophisticated and debonair Englishman with corn colored hair. Lord Peter's lady love is the Oxford don, Harriet Vane, who is, perhaps, the first modern female sleuth. She stars in Gaudy Night, my favorite Sayers novel, which appeared in 1936. I don't remember when I first read it, but I was young enough that it made me want to go to Oxford.

Another more recent series also has an academic background. Amanda Cross writes about Kate Fansler, a "young, witty, beautiful and erudite professor of literature at a large metropolitan university", which has amazing similarities to Columbia. Things happen at this University, which, I sincerely hope, never happened at any real one. Kate always solves the mystery in quite an intellectual manner, too intellectual according to one of my friends who thinks Kate overdoes the logic a little. But she does have time between murders to meet and, six or seven books later; marry Reed Amhearst of the D. A.'s office.

Don't get the idea that most female sleuths live and work on college campuses. They are cops and PI's and reporters and lawyers and artists. There are even a London Chief Superintendent and an Episcopal priest. Most of them are fairly young, somewhere between attractive and beautiful, and smarter than their male counterparts. They usually, although not always, have a mild to hot love interest, often with one of their competitors.

Linda Barnes has a six foot one inch tall redheaded private investigator named Carlotta Carlyle, a public investigator who drives a taxi like a fiend, has a cat named TC and works in Boston. Norah Mulcahaney is a police lieutenant in New York City. She is the creation of Lillian O'Donnell. Across the country Judith VanGieson's Neil Hamel is a lawyer in Albuquerque. In "Raptor" a case takes her to Montana and includes some incredibly beautiful writing about a gyrfalcon and the efforts to save it from human predators.

Jenny Cain, created by Nancy Pickard, loves art and computers. Susan Conant's Holly Winter is a writer whose best friend is a beautiful Alaskan malamute named Rowdy. Sharyn McCrumb's Elizabeth MacPherson is a forensic anthropologist who knows more about Mardi Gras than you ever wanted to know.

Sure, mysteries are escape fiction. But today we have a lot to escape from. Escaping into a mystery will not add to our personal trauma, whatever it may be. It will not make us cry or make us angry or force us to face the major problems of the world. Often it will make us laugh and almost always it will keep us interested. It is usually well written and the characters are real. And I do love to see those smart women outwit everybody. Viva la mystere.