Older, wiser. . . And crimes solved ‹Crimereads

Have you found a quiet revolution on your bookshelves and television? I am talking about the ascent and the rise of the older amateur -Sleuth.

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Twenty years ago I would have been more than Miss Marple, but now we have Elizabeth and Joyce from Thursday Murder Club, the new Marlow Murders team in the books of Robert Thorogood, Agatha Raisin in the books of Mc Beaton and Susan Ryeland in the Magpie Murder series in the Magpie -Murder series to just a few to mention.

Of course, the detective of the professional older woman gave our books and screens for about fifty years or so. I still remember the sensation in 1991 when Helen Mirren Lynda La Plante's uncompromising character Jane Tennison brought to life in the TV version of Prime Suspect. Here was an older woman as a detective chief inspector and above all as a protagonist in history. Far too long, the older female characters that we read and saw on the screen became a male protagonist, mother, an aunt, a curious neighbor, the wife and most victims. With Jane Tennison we got a competent and fully realized older female figure that had come on the hard tour and as well as it gave. And young, the male critics of the 90s had a lot to say.

DCI Tennison paved the way for Anne Cleeves' di Vera Stanhope. Vera formed compassionate, compassionate and ignored her age and opened the doors for excellent older police women in books and on television. And with them their amateur colleagues, two of whom are my own characters, came Lady Gus and Lady Julia, during my reign. The benevolent society of poorly suitable womenand his brand new continuation, Of the women's road leaders to complete ruin.

Why are older women amateur so popular? I think it's a complicated question. The Answer would have to explore reader demographics (who is reading crime fiction and driving), The Ebb and Flow of Particular Markets and Where Manuscript Purchase Money is Targeted (Young Adult Fiction a Golden Age But Now Crime Fiction – ParticLy Crime Novel – is booming), The Number of Older Influential Actresses Looking for Good Parts and Finding Them in Crime Fiction, and the State of Gender and Age Politics, Particularly in an AGEING Population. I don't think the answer can be found in a short article -it could actually be a PHD research question -but I can give some thoughts on why I am now writing older female tendency.

Until recently, I wrote young protagonists in various genres – crime, imagination and science fiction – and enjoyed them thoroughly. Then I met my fifties. Together with menopause, I realized that I wanted to write characters who had more confidence, life experience and definitely older women's attitude. I wanted to write characters who reflected my own middle of the life stage and all the glory and imperfections that had lived on earth with a serious number of years.

Now I enjoy the chance to write older women as protagonists. Lady Gus and Lady Julia are forty -two and no addition to a male main character. They are not the murder victim, the woman, the background mothers or the curious neighbors. They may be released from the patriarchal world around them, but they drive history and use their minds and their life knowledge to help other women in trouble. And I would like to read and see: Clever older women who solve crimes by using skills and knowledge they have developed through their lives. Skills that are often mocked, but prove to be invaluable in the amateur sling game: empathy, interrelation know how and the ability not to worry about what other people think. And of course the occasional, well -known kick in the groin area. I suspect that there are many other readers in the same stage in the middle of life that tries to see themselves in the fiction they read.

In a world that seems to be devoted to darkness and violent misogyny, it is soothing to see that older women make a difference in books and television series. Yes, it's fiction, but when we see each other in stories, we see the possibilities in our own lives. The older woman is no longer overlooked. It is not invisible or the addition to the history of another. It is the focus and it is courageous and wise and ready to act.

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