Kick-Ass Heroines WHO Should Be Read? by Zoë Sharp

The biggest problem I had when asked to compile a list of kick-ass heroines that should be read, was narrowing it down. There has been an explosion of great female characters in recent years, and the ones I name here are just a few of them.

One of my long-time favourites has to be Lt Eve Dallas of the NYPSD (New York Police & Security Department) in the future-set police procedurals by JD Robb. This series now numbers over 50, including novellas and short stories. Dallas is a tough, damaged and gritty heroine, ably assisted by a cast of great female characters, and Dallas’s impossibly rich, impossibly handsome (and impossibly sexy) husband, Roarke. The first in the series was NAKED IN DEATH, published in 1995.

The first novel by Seeley James featuring ex-athlete, Pia Sabel, was THE GENEVA DECISION, now part of James’ Sabel Origins set. A former soccer star, Sabel takes over her father’s private security company and is soon joined in the series by unstable military veteran, Jacob Stearne, who might or might not be receiving divine guidance from the winged god, Mercury. (Or he may simply be bonkers. You decide.) Either way, the books are great fun and well worth reading.

One of my favourite kick-ass female characters is a sidekick rather than the main protagonist in her own right. Lee Child first featured former army Master Sergeant and military police operative, Frances Neagley, in BAD LUCK AND TROUBLE. She’s cool and dry, rarely impressed and sometimes scary (according to Reacher himself.) She has made half a dozen outings in Lee’s work, and even one in my own Charlie Fox novel, SECOND SHOT. How come? Because the real Frances L Neagley is a huge mystery fan who regularly bids to be a character in authors’ books in charity auctions at conventions like Bouchercon.

And I guess, shuffling my feet awkwardly, I should put in a mention here for my own kick-ass heroine. A former Special Forces trainee turned bodyguard, Charlie Fox was described by Paul Goat Allen at the Chicago Tribune as “Ill-tempered, aggressive and borderline psychotic, Fox is also compassionate, introspective and highly principled: arguably one of the most enigmatic – and coolest – heroines in contemporary genre fiction.”

 

If the character of Frances Neagley suffers from haptephobia (fear of being touched) then Harry Bingham’s DC Fiona Griffiths of Cardiff Police has far stranger hang-ups which lead her to identify more strongly with the dead than the living. Her first appearance was in TALKING TO THE DEAD, which was turning into a two-part Sky TV drama starring Sophie Rundle. A great and unusual heroine who can kick some serious ass when required.

By contrast, Lori Anderson in Steph Broadribb’s DEEP DOWN DEAD is a single mother bounty hunter, who by a combination of circumstances has to take her young daughter with her to collect a fugitive from out of state. As you might expect, trouble ensues, and Broadribb gives her tough heroine added depth by adding ferocious maternal instinct into the mix.

Ex-cop turned Chicago PI, Georgia Davis, is the heroine of five novels by acclaimed author Libby Fischer Hellmann. Tough, smart, principled and tenacious, Georgia first appears in a cameo in Hellmann’s Ellie Foreman series novel, A PICTURE OF GUILT, but plays a larger role in AN IMAGE OF DEATH, then steps squarely onto centre stage in EASY INNOCENCE.

I have long been a fan of the late Robert B Parker’s spare style of prose and sharp action scenes in his Spenser and Jesse Stone series. With Boston PI Sunny Randall, he combined everything I liked most about his first two series, but with a female protagonist to root for. She’s as smart and capable as Spenser, and still surrounded by a wonderful cast of subsidiary characters, but perhaps with more emotional depth. The first book in this series is FAMILY HONOR.

I was already reading Rachel Amphlett’s Dan Taylor thrillers before she began her modern spin on the police procedural with SCARED TO DEATH, featuring Detective Kay Hunter of Kent police. Hunter is as driven as you would expect, but her resilience is also tested as she fights a personal vendetta against her as well as the villains of each particular instalment.

Another memorable subsidiary character is that of DI Roberta Steel in the Aberdeen-set DS Logan McRae crime thrillers by Stuart MacBride. Steel has a major role to play in all the Logan McRae books, right from COLD GRANITE onward. She’s politically incorrect, a chain-smoker, foul-mouthed and over-the-top, and you can’t help but love her for it. Clearly, MacBride did too, because he wrote the spinoff standalone NOW WE ARE DEAD featuring Steel in a leading role.

And finally, one of my all-time favourites is Kinsey Millhone, the heroine of the alphabet series by the late Sue Grafton. Millhone is prickly, fiercely independent, and a skilled and methodical private detective in the fictional Santa Teresa, a thinly disguised Santa Barbara in California. The ending to the first in the series, A IS FOR ALIBI, still blows me away, years after I first read it.

Zoë Sharp is the author of twelve books in her award-winning crime thriller series featuring ex-Special Forces trainee turned bodyguard, Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Fox. Lee Child said: “If Jack Reacher were a woman, he’d be Charlie Fox.” Sharp has also written a joint novella with espionage thriller author, John Lawton, numerous short stories, and two standalones, the latest of which is DANCING ON THE GRAVE (July 2018) which is her take on the Washington Sniper attacks, set in the English Lake District. Find out more at www.ZoeSharp.com.

Dancing On The Grave by Zoë Sharp

ZACE £9.99 mmpb ISBN: 9781909344402 ebook ISBN: 9781909344396

 In one of the most beautiful corners of England, something very ugly is about to take place.  A sniper with a mission…  a young cop with nothing to lose…  a CSI with everything to prove…  a teenage girl with a terrifying obsession… There’s a killer on the loose in the Lake District, and the calm of an English summer is shattered.  For newly qualified Crime Scene Investigator Grace McColl, it’s both the start of a nightmare and the chance to prove herself after a mistake that cost a life.  For Detective Constable Nick Weston, recently transferred from London, it’s an opportunity to recover his nerve after a disastrous undercover operation left him for dead.  And for a lonely, loveless teenage girl, Edith, it’s the start of a twisted fantasy— one she never dreamed might come true.

Books to Look Forward to from Orion Publishing

January 2017

Under the Harrow is by Flynn Berry.  When Nora takes the train from London to visit her sister in the countryside, she expects to find her waiting at the station, or at home cooking dinner. But when she walks into Rachel's familiar house, what she finds is entirely different: her sister has been the victim of a brutal murder. Stunned and adrift, Nora finds she can't return to her former life. An unsolved assault in the past has shaken her faith in the police, and she can't trust them to find her sister's killer. Haunted by the murder and the secrets that surround it, Nora is under the harrow: distressed and in danger. As Nora's fear turns to obsession, she becomes as unrecognizable as the sister her investigation uncovers.

On its surface, life in Houston is as you would expect: drive-in restaurants, souped-up cars, jukeboxes, teenagers discovering their sexuality. But beneath the glitz and superficial normalcy, a class war has begun, and it is nothing like the conventional portrayal of the decade. Against this backdrop Aaron Holland Broussard discovers the poignancy of first love and a world of violence he did not know existed. When Aaron spots the beautiful and gifted Valerie Epstein fighting with her boyfriend, Grady Harrelson, at a Galveston drive-in, he inadvertently challenges the power of the Mob and one of the richest families in Texas. He also discovers he must find the courage his father had found as an American soldier in the Great War. Written in evocative prose, The Jealous Kind may prove to be James Lee Burke's most encompassing work yet. As Aaron undergoes his harrowing evolution from boy to man, we can't help but recall the inspirational and curative power of first love and how far we would go to protect it.  The Jealous Kind is by James Lee Burke.

February 2017

You Can Run is by Steve Mosby.  When a car crashes into a garage on an ordinary street, the attending officer is shocked to look inside the damaged building and discover a woman imprisoned within. As the remains of several other victims are found in the attached house, police believe they have finally identified the Red River killer – a man who has been abducting women for nearly twenty years and taunting the police with letters about his crimes. but now the main suspect, John blythe, is on the run. As the manhunt for blythe intensifies, DI Will Turner finds himself fighting to stay involved in the investigation. The Red River killings hold a personal significance to him, and he must be the one to find the killer . . .

Homicide inspector Gavin Cain is standing by a grave when he gets the call. Cain knows there's something terrible in the coffin they're about to exhume. He and his team have received a dying man's confession and it has led them here. Cain is summoned by Mayor Castelli, who has been sent sinister photographs of a woman that he claims he doesn't know and a note threatening that worse are on their way. As Cain tries to identify the woman in the pictures, and looks into the mayor's past, he finds himself being drawn towards a situation as horrifying and as full of secrets as the grave itself.  The Dark Room is by Jonathan Moore.

Ragdoll is by Daniel Cole.  A body is discovered with the dismembered parts of six victims stitched together, nicknamed by the press as the 'Ragdoll'. Assigned to the shocking case are Detective William 'Wolf' Fawkes, recently reinstated to the London Met, and his former partner Detective Emily Baxter. The 'Ragdoll Killer' taunts the police by releasing a list of names to the media, and the dates on which he intends to murder them. With six people to save, can Fawkes and Baxter catch a killer when the world is watching their every move?

March 2017

Kings of America is by R J Ellroy.  Fleeing to America following a terrible crime, Irish-born fighter, Danny McCabe, throws in his lot with Nicolas and Lucia Mariani, siblings who have emigrated from Corsica in search of their fortunes. Adrift in the tough and unforgiving world of 1930s New York, they rely on Danny's bareknuckle fighting skills to survive. While Nicolas is tempted ever deeper into the underworld, Lucia can think of little but her obsessive drive to succeed in Hollywood. When Danny McCabe's dreams of boxing stardom become a terrifying nightmare, fate compels them to escape westwards to Los Angeles. On the run, the trio are bound together by blood, by shared secrets, and finally by love, as Danny and Lucia embark upon an affair that is as profound as it is dangerous. Nicolas, driven by greed, soon finds a welcome home in the dark world of corruption and vice that lies behind the glitzy facade of America's city of dreams. Danny McCabe is desperate to bury the dark secret of his past, while Lucia is caught in the crossfire between her brother and the man she loves.

The Bitter Season is by Tami Hoag.  A middle-aged couple - hacked to death in their own home - with a samurai sword. Normal people. Who were they? And why were they targeted? Twenty years ago a policeman was murdered in his own back garden and the killer was never caught. One woman might link these mysteries. But she is being watched. Can Detectives Nikki Liska and Sam Kovac find her before it is too late?

Tattletale is by Sarah J Naughton.  One day changes Jody's life forever. She has shut herself

down, haunted by her memories and unable to trust anyone. But then she meets Abe, the perfect stranger next door and suddenly life seems full of possibility and hope. One day changes Mags's life forever. After years of estrangement from her family, Mags receives a shocking phone call. Her brother Abe is in hospital and no-one knows what happened to him. She meets his fiance Jody, and gradually pieces together the ruins of the life she left behind. But the pieces don't quite seem to fit.

April 2017

Don’t Let Go is by Michel Bussi.  In an idyllic resort on the island of La Reunion, Liane Bellion and her husband Martial are enjoying the perfect moment with their 6-year-old daughter. Turquoise skies, blue sea, palm trees, a warm breeze. Then Liane disappears. She went up to her hotel room between 3 and 4pm and never came back. Her husband, worried, had gone to the room along with the concierge - the room was empty but there was blood everywhere. Despite his protestations of innocence, the police view Martial as their prime suspect. He was the only other person who went to the hotel room between 3 and 4pm according to the staff of the hotel. Then he disappears along with his daughter. With Martial as prime suspect, helicopters scan the island, racial tensions surface, and more corpses are found. Is he really his wife's killer? And if he isn't, why does he appear to be so guilty?

Don't look for me. It was a simple instruction. And for six years Carter Blake has kept his word. He hasn't looked for the woman he once loved and lost. But now her life is in danger and Blake is forced to break that promise. Trenton Gage is a hitman with a talent for finding people - dead or alive. His latest job is to track down a woman who's on the run, harbouring a secret many would kill for. It turns out Blake and Gage are after the same person - but who will get to her first? Don’t Look For Me is by Mason Cross.

May 2017

A missing child. When wealthy businessman Leonard Howell's daughter is kidnapped, the police jump on it straight away. But Howell knows this won't be straightforward - he needs someone willing to break the rules. A criminal lawyer. Once a con artist, now a hotshot lawyer, Eddie Flynn's learnt that fast talk and sleight of hand are just as important in the courtroom are they are on the street. Knowing what it's like to lose a daughter, he'll stop at nothing to save Howell's. A corrupt case. With a client on trial for his life, and the body count rising, Eddie Flynn is starting to fear that the whole thing was a set-up from the very beginning. The only question is who is deadlier - the man who knows the truth, or the one who believes a lie? A missing girl, a desperate father and a case that threatens to destroy everyone involved - Eddie Flynn's got his work cut out.  The Liar is by Steve Cavanagh.

June 2017

A Twist of the Knife is by Becky Masterman.  It takes a strong woman to be able to watch someone die. Brigid Quinn is tough, determined, steely and sharper than sharp. As an ex-agent of the FBI she has seen it all, and survived. But nothing can cut her closer to the bone than family...When Brigid gets a call from her mother saying her father is in hospital with pneumonia, she decides to check on her former colleague Laura Coleman who is living nearby. Having saved Brigid's life, Laura is now working on an 'innocence project', investigating cold cases. And one in particular seems to have caught her attention. Fifteen years before, Marcus Creighton was accused of killing his wife and three children. Now the state governor has signed the warrant for his execution. Worried that her friend is getting in too deep, Brigid promises to help. But what if her instincts are betraying her? If she can't even trust her memories of her own childhood, how can she make a call on some stranger's story that took place over fifteen years before?

DC Fiona Griffiths is bored. It's been months since she had a good corpse, let alone a decent murder to deal with, and it's frankly driving her nuts. And then comes the news, and she has to literally stop herself from jumping with joy: not just a murder, but a decapitation, with an antique sword no less, and a murder scene that has been laid out like a particularly gruesome crossword clue. Gaynor Charteris was an archaeologist leading a team excavating a nearby iron-age site. Genial, respected, well-liked, it was hard to see why anyone would want to kill her in such a brutal way. But as Fiona starts to dig beneath the surface, she finds evidence of a crime that leads back to King Arthur and his final battle - a crime so bizarre that getting her superiors to take it seriously is going to be her toughest job. Especially since the crime hasn't yet been committed.  The Deepest Grave is by Harry Bingham.

The Boy is by Tami Hoag and she returns with a gripping suspense thriller starring detectives Broussard and Fourcade. Mother In the sleepy Lousiana town of Bayou Breaux, a mother runs to her neighbour - bloody and hysterical. The police arrive to find Genevieve Gauthier cradling her seven-year-old son in her arms as he bleeds to death. Liar Detective Nick Fourcade finds no evidence of a break-in. His partner Detective Annie Broussard is troubled by parts of Genevieve's story that don't make sense. Twenty four hours later teenager Nora Florette is reported missing. Local parents fear a maniac is preying on their children, and demand answers from the police. Murderer? Fourcade and Broussard discover something shocking about Genevieve's past. She is both victim and the accused; a grieving mother and a woman with a deadly secret. Could she have something to do with the disappearance of teenager Nora Florette? A unbearable loss or an unthinkable crime? 

July 2017

Denise Ang, a thirty year-old researcher at a Newcastle hospital, sees a story in the paper about a young woman’s death. Stories emerge to say she was an escort favoured by top political figures, but as Denise finds herself getting more involved in the investigations, she realises that she’s in deeper than she first thought.  You Don’t Know Me is by Brooke Magnanti

Books to Look Forward to from Orion

July 2016

British detective Fiona Griffiths, one of the most engaging female protagonists in crime thrillers, is back with her toughest case yet. When the body of a young woman is found in an old 'dead house' - the annexe where the dead were stored before burial in medieval times - of a tiny church in a small town in Wales, it seems that past and present have come together in a bizarre and horrifying way. For DC Fiona Griffiths, the girl - a murder victim whose corpse was laid out with obvious tenderness - represents an irresistibly intriguing puzzle, given Fiona's unusual empathy for the dead. And when her investigations lead her to an obscure and secretive monastery hidden in a remote valley, she finds that the murder victim is far from the only victim of a dark and disturbing melding of modern crime and medieval religious practices. Only Fiona is capable of solving this brilliantly crafted mystery.  The Dead House is by Harry Bingham.

September 2016

The Twenty-Three is by Linwood Barclay.  A dark cloud of suspicion and fear continues to hang over the town of Promise Falls. A series of bizarre, ominously threatening incidents suggests someone is plotting to take revenge on the town. But who is the perpetrator, and revenge for what? Now the time for threats is over. And the inhabitants are about to discover the truth, with devastating consequences.

Growing up in a difficult household and in a crumbling mansion with two elder sisters (who are both, in their own way, horrible to her), a father who seems perennially lost in contemplation of the past and haunted by fleeting memories of her mother, who died mysteriously in the Himalayas when Flavia was a baby, her refuge has always been an obsession with chemistry; an interest that has proved very useful whenever unexplained

death has come to the otherwise sleepy village of Bishop's Lacey, which is surprisingly often.  But now Flavia is presented with her strangest mystery yet: a dead man found hanging upside down, a beloved children’s book concealing a shocking secret and strange pagan rites in the village…. But the latest mystery to puzzle Bishop's Lacey's eccentric inhabitants is perhaps the strangest and darkest yet, and it will test Flavia's budding investigative skills to the limit - not to mention put her in terrible danger ... Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d is by Alan Bradley.

October 2016

The Wrong Side of Goodbye is by Michael Connelly. 'What do you want me to do?' Bosch

asked again. 'I want you to find someone for me,' Vance said. 'Someone who might not have ever existed.' Harry Bosch is working as a part-time detective in the town of San Fernando outside of Los Angeles, when he gets the invitation to meet with the ageing aviation billionaire Whitney Vance. When he was eighteen Vance had a relationship with a Mexican girl called Vibiana Duarte, but soon after becoming pregnant she disappeared. Now, as he reaches the end of his life, Vance wants to know what happened to Vibiana and whether there is an heir to his vast fortune. And Bosch is the only person he trusts to undertake the assignment. Harry's aware that with such sums of money involved, this could be a dangerous undertaking - not just for himself, but for the person he's looking for - but as he begins to uncover Vibiana's tragic story, and finds uncanny links to his own past, he knows he cannot rest until he finds the truth.

When editor Susan Ryeland is given the tattered manuscript of Alan Conway's latest novel, she has little idea it will change her life. She's worked with the revered crime writer for years and his detective, Atticus Pund, is renowned for solving crimes in the sleepy English villages of the 1950s. As Susan knows only too well, vintage crime sells handsomely. It's just a shame that it means dealing with an author like Alan Conway...But Conway's latest tale of murder at Pye Hall is not quite what it seems. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects, but hidden in the pages of the manuscript there lies another story: a tale written between the very words on the page, telling of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition and murder.  Magpie Murders is by Anthony Horowitz.

November 2016

Fleeing to America following a terrible crime, Irish-born fighter, Danny McCabe, throws in his lot with Nicolas and Lucia Mariani, siblings who have emigrated from Corsica in search of their fortunes. Adrift in the tough and unforgiving world of 1930s New York, they rely on Danny's bareknuckle fighting skills to survive. While Nicolas is tempted ever deeper into the underworld, Lucia can think of little but her obsessive drive to succeed in Hollywood. When Danny McCabe's dreams of boxing stardom become a terrifying nightmare, fate compels them to escape westwards to Los Angeles. On the run, the trio are bound together by blood, by shared secrets, and finally by love, as Danny and Lucia embark upon an affair that is as profound as it is dangerous. Nicolas, driven by greed, soon finds a welcome home in the dark world of corruption and vice that lies behind the glitzy facade of America's city of dreams. Danny McCabe is desperate to bury the dark secret of his past, while Lucia is caught in the crossfire between her brother and the man she loves.  Kings of America is by R J Ellory

Rather be the Devil is by Ian Rankin. John Rebus, now a couple of years into his retirement finds himself drawn into a cold case from the 1970s involving a female socialite, found dead in a bedroom in one of Edinburgh's most luxurious hotels. It's a crime over forty years old, but no one was ever found guilty. Now, Rebus has his own reasons to investigate ...but it is going to set him against some very dangerous people.

Lovemurder is by Saul Black.  Troubled San Francisco homicide detective Valerie Hart is planning a rare weekend away from the job when she gets the call. A body has been found. A woman, brutally murdered. And the cryptic note left by the body is addressed to Valerie. The victim is unknown to her, but as Valerie analyses the scene, the clues begin to point in a deeply disturbing direction: to a maximum security prison where a woman called Katherine Glass is awaiting execution for a series of gruesome killings. And Valerie was the cop who put her there. The last thing Valerie wants to do is re-enter Katherine's twisted world, but when a second body is discovered, with another puzzling clue, she realises she has no choice. Katherine Glass holds the key to the killings, and Valerie needs to find out what she knows before the murders come even closer to home. Even if it means playing a deadly game where once again, the psychopathic killer holds all the cards.

Frankie James is a young man with a lot on his shoulders. His mother disappeared when he was fifteen; his father's in jail for armed robbery; and he owes rent on the SoHo snooker club he inherited to one of London's toughest gangsters. Things, you'd think, can only get better. Actually, they're about to get a whole lot worse. He always swore to his mum he'd keep his younger, wilder brother out of trouble, but when Jack turns up at the club early in the morning, covered in someone else's blood, with no memory of the night before, and with the cops hard on his heels, it seems there's no way Frankie can make good on his promise. With Jack banged up, awaiting trial for the vicious murder of a bride-to-be - a murder that's sparked an even more vicious gang war between London's two foremost crime families - Frankie knows a conviction could quickly turn into a death sentence. To prevent that from happening, he needs to find out who framed Jack and why, but that means entering the sordid world of bent coppers, ruthless mobsters and twisted killers that he's tried all his life to avoid getting sucked into. Now, however, he no longer has any choice. But in the dog-eat-dog underworld of 1980s SoHo, is he tough enough, and smart enough to come out on top?  Framed is by Ronnie O’Sullivan.

January 2017

A Twist in the Knife is by Becky Masterman.   Brigid Quinn is a former Fed trying to live a normal life after years in the most twisted of company - but still entangled in the guilt, violence and rage inevitable after a career spent tracking killers. Now Brigid is drawn into the case of a man on Death Row, awaiting execution for the murder of his wife and three children. Something tells Brigid that an injustice is about to be done, but when she investigates the circumstances behind the convictions, she finds the truth is even more shocking.

On its surface, life in Houston is as you would expect: drive-in restaurants, souped-up cars, jukeboxes, teenagers discovering their sexuality. But beneath the glitz and superficial normalcy, a class war has begun, and it is nothing like the conventional portrayal of the decade. Against this backdrop Aaron Holland Broussard discovers the poignancy of first love and a world of violence he did not know existed.  When Aaron spots the beautiful and gifted Valerie Epstein fighting with her boyfriend, Grady Harrelson, at a Galveston drive-in, he inadvertently challenges the power of the Mob and one of the richest families in Texas. He also discovers he must find the courage his father had found as an American soldier in the Great War.  The Jealous Kind is by James Lee Burke.