After Agatha: Women Write Crime

(Paperback)

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From Agatha Christie and Patricia Highsmith to Val McDermid and JK Rowling, After Agatha is an indispensable guide to women's crime writing over the last century and an exploration of why women read crime Spanning the 1930s to present day, After Agatha charts the explosion in women's crime writing and examines key developments on both sides of the Atlantic: from the women writers at the helm of the UK Golden Age and their American and Canadian counterparts fighting to be heard, to the 1980s experimental trio, Marcia Muller, Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton, who created the first female PIs, and the more recent emergence of forensic crime writing and domestic noir thrillers such as Gone Girl and Apple Tree Yard.

After Agatha examines the diversification of crime writing and highlights landmark women's novels which featured the marginalised in society as centralised characters. Cline also explores why women readers are drawn to the genre and seek out justice in crime fiction, in a world where violent crimes against women rarely have such resolution.

The book includes interviews with dozens of contemporary authors such as Ann Cleeves, Sophie Hannah, Tess Gerritsen and Kathy Reichs and features the work of hundreds of women crime and mystery writers. It is an essential read for crime fiction lovers.

Praise for Sally Cline:

'Impressively researched and imaginatively written' - Sunday Times

'Cline gives depth and a dark edge to the familiar story of the Fitzgeralds that began stylishly in hope and ended in despair' - Times

'Fascinating, wide-ranging, hugely knowledgeable an indispensable guide and a beguiling education' - William Boyd

'Her biography is enjoyable and even gripping' - Sunday Telegraph

'Cline's clear-headed and careful study should make clear that [the Fitzgeralds'] relationship can no longer be regarded as a great love story [and] demonstrates the terrible danger of such romantic fairytales' - Guardian

'For anyone who has ever read a biography or memoir, or thought of writing one this book of advice from the best writers in the UK is an instant classic' - Elaine Showalter

Reviews

In After Agatha, Sally Cline offers a brilliantly readable overview of the genre that succeeds in being both comprehensive and detailed. A real tour de force and a must read for fans of crime fiction -- Leigh Russell, bestselling author of the DI Geraldine Steel series
A valuable addition to any critical shelf -- Maxim Jakubowski * Crime Time *

Author Bio

Sally Cline was an award-winning biographer and fiction writer, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Research Fellow at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, and former Advisory Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund as well as a Hawthornden Fellow. After Agatha: The Explosion in Women's Crime Writing was her fourteenth book. She wrote ten non-fiction titles, one biographical novel Lily and Max (Golden Books) and one book of short stories, One of Us is Lying (Golden Books). Her biography Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John (John Murray, UK) is now a classic, and was shortlisted for the LAMBDA Prize. Her study Lifting the Taboo: Women, Death and Dying (Little, Brown, UK) won the Arts Council Prize for Non-Fiction. Her ground-breaking biography Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise (John Murray, UK) and Zelda Fitzgerald: The Tragic Meticulously Researched Biography of the Jazz Age's High Priestess (Arcade, NY, US) was a bestseller in both the UK and the US and preceded her landmark biography Dashiell Hammett: Man of Mystery (Arcade NY, US) She was the co-series Editor for Bloomsbury's nine-volume Writers' and Artists' Companions in Writing, for which she co-authored two titles: Literary Non-Fiction (with Midge Gillies) and Life Writing: Writing Biography, Autobiography and Memoir (with Carole Angier). She was 2013 Judge for the HW Fisher Prize for First Published Biographies, a Consulting Editor for the International Literary Quarterly and wrote and recorded podcasts for the Royal Literary Fund. Her short stories for print and radio have won prizes from the BBC and Raconteur. She also won a Hosking Houses Trust Fellowship for Women Writers over forty. Formerly Director of the Royal Literary Fund Mentoring Scheme, mentor for the Arts Council Escalator programme, judge and mentor for the prestigious Gold Dust Mentoring Scheme, she taught social science and politics at Cambridge University. She was on City University London's Creative Writing Programme, was Writer in Residence and mentor for the MA in Creative Writing at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge and ran Creative Writing Workshops for the Guardian Masterclasses at Stratford on Avon. She held degrees and masters from Durham University (English and Philosophy) and Lancaster University (Sociology and Politics) and was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters in International Writing. She lived in Cornwall and Cambridge but sadly passed away in 2022.