Female Sleuths

Private Enquiries: The Secret History of Female Sleuths by Caitlin Davies (History Press, 2023 hardback) is a fun little thing and just in the right timeline for Call/Trail of Cthulhu … and yes, I know I said ‘fun little thing’ and I’m sorry about that but I don’t really know what other words to use. There’s a trend I’ve noticed in recent British publications; they seem softer, somehow. Not as challenging. Nice. Cozy. Easygoing. Like someone dumped an industrial quantity of tranquilizers and weed into the cake mix and now the Vicar’s tea party is happily contemplating their third eye. 

It’s a good book but I wonder how often I’ll be returning to it. It may be a one-and-done. 

Still. The topic is great and something I’d like to know more about, so I’m not sorry I picked it up. There’s something for the back of the book jacket, hey.  

Davies has a chunk of fiction and non-fiction under her belt tackling, among many other things, Holloway Prison and female crooks from the seventeenth century to now, so this is a natural progression. She kicks off with a great little vignette about Annette Kerner, Queen of Disguise, and frankly, if you Keepers out there aren’t using Kerner as a template for your NPCs there’s no saving your grey, bespotted souls.

Honestly, what’s not to like? Kerner runs away from home to become a nightclub singer and ends up working in British Intelligence before founding the Mayfair Detective Agency. Just that one sentence has enough plot threads for a mini campaign. Perfect material for anyone’s table. 

Then Davies moves on to … actually, I’m not sure. This is the point in the movie where my eyelids go leaden and then, when I wake, I’m fuzzy on where exactly I am in the plot. Except here’s Davies telling me that Kerner wrote a memoir, Woman Detective, published 1954. So now I know what’s next on my reading list, if I can find it. (Amazon tells me there’s also Further Adventures of a Woman Detective so, y’know … if I can find it …) 

See, what Davies wants to do is tell me about her life and times. Except I didn't walk in the door looking to learn about Davies' life and times. I wanted the female sleuths. The history. What I'm getting is a strong whiff of author insert followed by a brief bit of history.

I think it's intended as a framing device; I just don't know why anyone thought this material needed a framing device.

There’s a lot to like about this book. I just wish it wasn’t stuffed with fluff. Unlike Winnie the Pooh, I have no affinity for fluff. I don’t need to know about Davies’ trip to the Sherlock Holmes museum or about her experiences taking the Association of British Investigators’ exam. I came here for the Kerner and her like, not the Davies. 

I do find it frustrating. I could cheerfully read an entire book about Kerner, Clubnose, Kate Easton, Mathilda Mitchell or any of the other characters who flit in and out of the narrative. What I wasn't expecting was a book in which Davies tells me all about her rambles through London looking for old office buildings, interspersed with Davies' trials and travails trying to pass a private investigator's exam, and then a chapter covering someone's entire career in a whirlwind of text before back I am on the Davies trail in the next chapter. 

Do I recommend it? Yes, but not in hardback unless you’re getting it from a charity shop. It’ll be out in paperback soon. Wait. It’s the kind of book you can data mine for more interesting information which you can then delve deeper into elsewhere. 

It could be an interesting resource for Mutant City Blues games. As presented, Mutant City is a near-future setting but there's nothing to say it has to be. It could be a 1890s Science Hero setting, set around, say, a department store ... like Selfridges ... where Mathilda Mitchell plies her trade as a store detective. Food for thought, particularly since the latest version of Mutant City includes variant rules for Private Investigators.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!