Not my April 1st post, just news of a new academic study of classic crime fiction. Middlebrow Feminism in Classic British Detective Fiction is by Melissa Schaub, an academic at the University of North Carolina. She says:
After I had read so many of these books, I noticed the same kind of character appearing in them over and over again. I call it the female gentleman. During [World War One], they worked in men’s jobs; it was a role switch that continued after the war. They even dressed in more ‘masculine’ clothing. The women in these stories drive cars fast, and they take risks. Intrepid is the word I would use for them.
Read more: The Laurinburg Exchange – Laurinburg scholar focuses on women sleuths
Preview at Palgrave Macmillan.
Past Offences: Classic crime, thrillers and mystery book reviews 
Looks interesting, though pricey ($80 makes my Masters of the Humdrum Mystery look cheap). IAnd it’s yet another book apparently looking at the Golden Age British detective novel solely though Christie, Sayers, Marsh, Allingham (also, less usually, Georgette Heyer), which unfortunately perpetuates this notion that you had two types of detective fiction back then: British, female, classical and American, male, hard-boiled. It’s why I tried to do something different with Masters.
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