The best crime fiction that features powerful female characters

This book grabbed me by the throat and refused to let go.

Jordan Harper does more with suggestion and a few well-crafted sentences than some writers accomplish in an entire novel. When he needs to be brutal, he’s a monster. When he needs to be tender, your eyes sting.

Polly is both a badass and a little girl—I don’t know how Harper pulled that off. And I have never cared so much about a stuffed animal as I have Polly’s teddy bear.

I’ve loved Lehane’s fiction ever since reading his Kenzie & Gennaro series, and Small Mercies is a small miracle.

It’s 1974, and the city of Boston is preparing to desegregate its public schools in the face of threats and violence. Mary Pat Fennessy, a tough Irish broad from Southie, is searching for her teenage daughter who failed to come home one night. Her questions irritate the local Irish mob. And when a young Black man is found dead under mysterious circumstances, the city is primed to explode.

As a Gen Xer, I found the 1970s setting on point and revelatory. Desperate and determined, Mary Pat is a force of nature. I loved the thrilling plot, the searing portrayal of racism and politics, and this fierce, flawed, and unflinching protagonist.

I devoured Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which centers on Lisbeth Salander, an expert computer hacker and asocial private investigator who is especially hostile towards men who abuse women.

A victim of mental and sexual abuse, Salander delights in exposing and punishing abusers, often in humiliating ways. I found her fascinating, a character with several layers: willful, antisocial, bisexual, violent, intelligent, awkward, angry, and compassionate. She is the victim and the avenger, the freakish outcast and the moral judge, a feminist incarnation of the tough-guy detective, and a critic of corruption and moral bankruptcy.

The novel’s prose is workmanlike, the plot at times far-fetched, and Larsson is about as subtle as a chainsaw. But Lisbeth Salander transcended the novel to become an iconic figure in crime fiction.

Brian is a fellow Georgia author and a friend. I was gobsmacked by his first novel, Bull Mountain, so when he asked if I would blurb the sequel, Like Lions, I didn’t hesitate a nanosecond.

There are evildoings galore: violent criminals, drug-running, revenge killings, and a hunt for buried millions. But our hero Sheriff Clayton Burroughs is a damaged soul, dependent on alcohol and painkillers, so three powerful female characters step up to the plate.

I loved Clayton’s wife Kate, fiercely loyal and protective of her family. Vanessa is a shadowy outsider, both deadly and compassionate. And Twyla Viner is the aging matriarch of another criminal family that has a bone or two to pick with Clayton. The lions in this book are the women, and they rule this jungle.

Amanda Kyle Williams quit school at sixteen, was diagnosed with dyslexia at twenty-two, and read her first book at twenty-three. She overcame addiction and wrote while working odd jobs, becoming a best-seller with her Keye Street series.

My wife heard Amanda speak at a dyslexia conference and told her about her husband who wanted to write books; later when I met Amanda at the Decatur Book Festival, she smiled and said, “Oh, yeah, you’re the writer.”

I love her protagonist Keye, a private investigator in Atlanta and former FBI profiler. She’s funny and gutsy and wrestles with her own demons. Don’t Talk to Strangers, the third in the series, is as good as the first two. Amanda died of cancer in 2018, but she left behind a tremendously inspiring legacy in both Keye and her own incredible story.