Why did Caitlin love this book?
A Suitable Job for a Woman, published in 1995, is an incredibly useful book in terms of the popular depiction of female PIs versus the day-to-day reality of women in the industry.
Val McDermid interviewed 34 PIs in Britain and the States, and while American PIs were open and relaxed, British women were more wary. Thirty years later, I had the same problem, and it took me a long time to earn the trust of my interviewees.
Val anticipated there would be more women working in private investigation in the future – and while progress has been slow, around 30 percent of trainees in Britain are now women. As one of her interviewees explains, it is "one of the few jobs where women can exploit the fact that we’re second-class citizens."
2 authors picked A Suitable Job for a Woman as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
""But down these mean streets must go a man who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished or afraid."" When Raymond Chandler wrote these words in his classic The Simple Art of Murder, he drew a blueprint for the male private eyes who descend from Philip Marlowe to populate the world of crime fiction.
But what if the private eye is a woman? And what if she is not a character in a novel but a real, working investigator testing not only the meanness but the absurdity of life on seamy streets? Who will tell her story?
Enter Manchester's…