Detecting Women

Philippa Gates is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario. She is the author of Detecting Men: Masculinity and the Hollywood Detective Film, also published by SUNY Press, and coeditor (with Stacy Gillis) of The Devil Himself: Villainy in Detective Fiction and Film.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsPart I. The Crime Lab: Gender and the Detective Genre 1. Introduction: The Case2. Detecting Criticism: Theorizing Gender and the Detective GenrePart II. The Rise and Demise of the Classical Female Detective: 1929 to 1950 3. Movie Modernization: The Film Industry and Working Women in the Depression4. Detecting as a Hobby: Amateur and Professional Detectives in the 1930s5. Sob Sisters Don’t Cry: The Girl Reporter as Detective in the 1930s6. In Name Only: The Transformation of the Female Detective in the 1940s7. The Maritorious Melodrama: The Female Detective in 1940s Film NoirPart III. From Crime-Fighter to Crime Scene Investigator: 1970 to Today 8. Femme Might Makes Right: The 1970s Blaxploitation Vigilante Crime-Fighter9. Detecting the Bounds of the Law: The Female Lawyer Thriller of the 1980s10. Detecting Identity: From Investigative Thrillers to Crime Scene InvestigatorsAppendix IAppendix IIAppendix IIINotesSelected FilmographyWorks CitedIndex

"An apt follow-up to Gates' Detecting Men … this book is breezy, informal, and yet immaculately researched." — CHOICE"Detecting Women is an extensive and authoritative, ambitious and comprehensive history of the female detective in Hollywood film from 1929 to 2009. Gates brings to light the sheer number of female detectives that have been overlooked in previous studies of the genre, especially those of the 1930s and 40s. Her innovative, engaging, and capacious approach to the female detective within feminist film history breaks new ground in the fields of gender and film studies." — SirReadaLot.org "This imaginative and entertaining study of the 'woman detective' film makes a huge contribution by giving extensive treatment to the female detectives in B movies and to the many investigating women characters in films not usually considered detective films. It will have great appeal for scholars, film buffs, and mystery fans." — Linda Mizejewski, author of Hardboiled and High Heeled: The Woman Detective in Popular Culture