Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, today offering another excerpt from my 2008 Agatha-Award-winning non-fiction book, How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries. Unlike most how-to books, mine isn’t just my take on writing. It also includes numerous anecdotes and bits of advice from other published historical mystery writers and touches on several topics that came up over the course 2005-2007 in the Crime Thru Time (CTT) online discussion group.

Were there “liberated women” in past eras? Of course. The difference is that they could not and did not express their feelings in the same way women in the 1960s did. No corset-burnings are recorded in the nineteenth century.

Do your research. Find out what real women did and base what could have happened to your fictional characters on that. Women cannot be placed in roles that were, in that particular time period, exclusively reserved for men. As Lynda S. Robinson points out in her essay, “Women’s Roles in the Ancient Mystery” in Deadly Women, she could not use a woman as her sleuth in Ancient Egypt because although pharaohs did use confidential inquiry agents, these officials were always male.

From the Middle Ages on, however, there are many female detectives in mystery fiction. Some critics say there are too many of them—intrepid, adventurous, independent-minded women who are, they claim, “unrealistic” because they would not have had the freedom, given the restrictions of the society they lived in, to investigate murders. Some call them modern women, even feminists, in costume.

Anne Perry comes in for particular attention in this area, even from critics who admire her work. In The Detective as Historian, Linda J. Holland-Toll labels Charlotte Ellison Pitt, her sister Emily, and their mother “too contemporary,” commenting that “the Ellison women are all rule breakers: why would Perry, who well knows the boundaries of the times, create what to Victorian eyes would have been an unholy trio? The Victorian preoccupation with blood and insanity would seem likelier to dismiss the whole family as mad, rather than accept them in society.”

What this critic overlooks is that most of the sleuthing done by these three women is in secret and behind the scenes. Yes, marriage to a policeman would probably banish most young gentlewomen from polite society, but when Charlotte moves in those circles, it is in borrowed finery that does not betray her current status and usually under the sponsorship of “Aunt Vespasia,” an elderly society matron who has apparently earned the right to do as she likes simply by surviving as long as she has and having money. No one, not even Ms. Holland-Toll, seems to question Vespasia’s believability when she decides to help out with an investigation.

There is, however, no simple way to dispute charges that a female sleuth is too modern in her actions or her outlook. Most of those who make these claims aren’t about to be convinced by the facts. The best you can do is trust your own research. If you’ve based a female sleuth and other fictional female characters on what you have discovered about the real women of the same period, then let your readers know your sources through author’s notes, blogs, speaking engagements, website extras, and any other means at your disposal. You might even make subtle mention of some of your role models in the text.

Paul C. Doherty categorizes the real-life detectives of medieval England as “monks or friars”—like his Athelstan—and “clerks, civil servants, men who attended the schools at Oxford and Cambridge”—like his Hugh Corbett. But Doherty doesn’t stop at enumerating the sort of men who might make good sleuths. For years he has cited two female physicians, Mathilde of Westminster (Edward II’s physician in 1322) and Cecily of Oxford (personal physician of Edward III in the 1330s) as examples of real women who might well have been called upon to investigate a murder. In The Cup of Ghosts, he uses Mathilde as his sleuth.

Rhys Bowen based her character Molly Murphy on her great aunt “who thought herself the equal of any man. Although women in 1900 were still restricted by the mores of society, many of them were attempting to break free of these restrictions. Women’s colleges were turning out young graduates who had learned to trust their own intellect and judgment. Louise Boyd led an expedition to the North Pole in 1910 and the NYPD was already employing real-life female detectives.”

Ask any author of a historical mystery series featuring a strong women and they will tell you that real women of the same era could do and often did many of the same things as the fictional characters in their historical mysteries.

So what can you do to make your historical sleuth stand out? She will need to be unique. Don’t repeat what’s already been done with fictional women in your historical period. Yes, your character can have some of the same traits as other detectives, but she must also have a quality (or a skill) or be in a situation that makes her different.

Aside from working in an unusual profession or craft, a female sleuth can be distinctive because of her circumstances. Give her no choice but to solve the crime and her actions automatically become believable. If she is about to be arrested, or someone she loves is accused of the crime, then she has a strong motivation to solve it herself, even if it means stepping outside the bounds of her usual existence.

Yet another way to make a female sleuth unique while keeping her true to her times is to create conflict in her personal life. Is she an abandoned wife? Does she have an eccentric grandmother to care for? Is she running away from an abusive home life? A heroine hiding a murder she committed in the past has been used in a number of historical mysteries already, so you might want to avoid that one, but there are still plenty of “personal problems” available. Today’s readers—witness the success of Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series—are frequently as interested in the psychological makeup of the sleuth as they are in her ability to solve mysteries.

original paperback cover from 2008

How to Write Killer Historical Novels: The Art and Adventure of Sleuthing Through the Past (2008) was also a finalist for the Anthony and Macavity awards. Reviewer Marv Lachman, in Deadly Pleasures, called it “the best book about writing mysteries that I have ever read.” It is available in a slightly revised and updated 2022 edition in both e-book and trade paperback formats.

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-four books traditionally published and has self published others. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. In 2023 she won the Lea Wait Award for “excellence and achievement” from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. She is currently working on creating new editions of her backlist titles. Her website is www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.