Dead Women Sell Books

A girl is missing … a vulnerable woman is being stalked … a girl is found brutally murdered … Dead women sell books.

So should I really be adding to a genre that glamorises the violent and sadistic victimisation of women?

My answer is ‘yes’ because the fact that dead women DO sell books is very interesting.

Good Girls Don’t Die, my first crime novel, centres on the tense relationship between the police and the media during a big murder enquiry, and - as happened at Soham and Ipswich - the additional pressure that a highly competitive, 24-hour rolling news industry places on a police investigation.

Dead women, of course, also sell newspapers: the more lurid, titillating, gruesome and voyeuristic the details, the better. So, woven through my story is how and why dead women get served up by the media for avid public consumption.

On television, believe it or not, far more men get killed than women, just as they do in real life. But male characters tend to be blasted, blown away, the fallen comrades of either side. And they will almost certainly die fully clothed. When a man is the prey, he’s likely to be hunted down because of something he wants or has done, not simply for his male body. Female victims are presented very differently – as they are on book jackets – with the camera lingering over separate, helplessly exposed, body parts. Blood, bruised flesh, torn garments, sprawled limbs: why?

Perhaps it’s partly because, on a good day, only about 25% of TV writers (of which I am one) and directors are women. It’s even worse in film. Which means that, on screen, more than 75% of the time, men are left to speak for and about women. No wonder that so few Hollywood movies pass the Bechdel Test, which is that two female characters have to be in at least one scene where they talk to each other about something other than a man.

It matters that a balance of women’s voices is heard, especially when it comes to violence against women: thankfully, the gender mix in crime fiction is very much healthier.

Mary Beard has talked about the public voice of women, showing how, since the Odyssey, women have been told to shut up. Mary and I were undergraduates together (at an all-women college where she is now Professor of Classics) and we are of the generation who fondly believed that we had earned the right to be heard.

And of course we have. But this year Mary was targeted by online trolls making disgusting and extremely violent personal threats against her simply because she voiced her opinions. Assertive female executives still report being labelled as shrill, bossy or up-tight ball-breakers. Rape victims are asking for it because they dare to wear short skirts or get drunk. The message is clear: Good Girls Don’t Die.

I also wanted to write about the men who victimise and kill women. Murderers are seldom singular and intriguing serial killers; all too often they’re just sad blokes who suck up a misogynistic culture and assume that women should shut up and do what they’re told. Or are too inadequate to know how else to express their desperate need of women except by aggressive blaming and shaming.

I wanted to explore what such misogynistic attitudes really express; what kind of fear of  - or longing for – women they conceal; what miseries they cause to both sexes. And what it’s like for women to be expected to play roles dictated by a culture in which glamorised dead women provide entertainment.

I also had to work out how to give my central detective character, Grace Fisher, a compelling and attractive voice. The noir tradition of male detectives decrees that a brooding, wounded, hard-drinking loner is per se rugged and noble. He can rescue or avenge women and children simply because he’s a man, while a female detective’s motives are more closely examined, and her vulnerabilities risk making her either a recovering victim or just a bit sad and flaky.

I wanted to show how well, or badly, Grace Fisher deals with the difficulties she encounters, with the labels used to shame her, when, as a police officer, she can’t or won’t shut up.

Excitingly, an organic tradition of modern female detectives is now evolving thanks to all kinds of crime writers of both sexes, and I’m thrilled to add to their characters’ wonderfully different voices.

Good Girls Don’t Die by Isabelle Grey is published by Quercus Books on 9 October, paperback and ebook £6.99

You can find more information about Isabelle Grey and her writing on her blog - http://isabellegrey.wordpress.com/ You can also follow her on Twitter @IsabelleGrey