Welcome
This website is a guide to American female sleuths who appear in a mystery series. It begins with the late 70’s and early 80’s when the “mothers” of an emerging mystery genre of American detecting women in a series, Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky first introduced their women detectives Sharon McCone, Kinsey Milhone and V.I. Warshawski.These early female protagonists in a series sparked a decades-long broadening of the role of women in detective fiction, which by now features not only hard-boiled private investigators, but police detectives, investigative professionals of all kinds and amateur sleuths from every walk of life. Sharon, Kinsey and V.I. were not the first women to have ever been featured in a leading role in a mystery novel or series, but they were a force that helped grow the genre into the incredible success it has become.
The data on this website was compiled over a twenty-five year period during which it morphed from a reading list, to a want list and inventory for collecting the books themselves to a comprehensive electronic database. The result is a website created to share with you which includes almost 1,100 authors, writing about more than 1,300 female sleuths in a series from Everywhere, U.S.A. who appear in over 5,500 books! Enjoy browsing, discovering new titles and series or just having a source to tell you in what order to read the books. It was this last compulsion that started all the list keeping in the first place!
