The very best… Female Sleuths

We fell in love with retired art teacher Miss Emily Seeton when we first read Picture Miss Seeton, and we hope you will too – and we were thrilled to publish her first new adventure in twenty years, Miss Seeton Quilts the Village, in September 2017.

So, to prepare for the latest chapter in demure Miss Seeton’s surprisingly adventurous life, we decided to celebrate our favourite female crime-hunters…

Stephanie Plum

This fictional lingerie-buyer-turned-bounty-hunter is the creation of the bestselling author Janet Evanovich, whose books are loved all over the world. On losing her job, Stephanie turns to her cousin Vinnie, and ends up as a bounty hunter at Vincent Plum Bail Bonds – and twenty-four books later (plus several short stories), she’s still in business.

Lori Anderson

Another American bounty hunter (there are a lot of them about), Lori Anderson in the creation of Steph Broadribb, and stars in Steph’s recent debut novel Deep Down Dead from Orenda Books. Though she wants to play it safe from now on, when her daughter’s health hangs in the balance and the medical bills start piling up, she has no option but to take on a dangerous job that will jeopardise everything she cares about most deeply…

Miss Marple

The most famous of them all, Agatha Christie’s gentle but acutely perceptive protagonist appeared in twenty of her novels, and has been portrayed on screen by Margaret Rutherford, Joan Hickson, Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie, among others.

A quiet spinster from the sleepy village of St Mary Mead, Jane Marple should never be underestimated, as a great many murderers found out over the course of her forty-year reign.

Jane Jeffry

Created by Jill Churchill, Jane Jeffry is a suburban housewife from Chicago, Illinois, who finds herself untangling crimes, such as the murder of her cleaning lady, whose neck became fatally tangled in her vacuum cleaner cord.

Stay tuned to farragobooks.com for news of Jane’s imminent arrival on our shelves – we can’t wait to share all her adventures with you.

 Miss Silver

Retired governess-turned-detective Miss Maud Silver, a close contemporary of Miss Marple – though of course the two never met – was the creation of novelist Patricia Wentworth, and first appeared in a book entitled Grey Mask, published in 1928. Her adventures have inevitably been compared with Miss Marple’s, but one key difference is that Miss Silver is a professional detective for whom each case is a job, rather than an occurrence that happens to cross her path.

Jessica Fletcher

Jessica Fletcher, the kindly mystery novelist of Cabot Cove, Maine, first appeared to us on the small screen, brought to life by the incomparable Angela Lansbury, but her adventures have also been transcribed in a number of books, so she deserves a place on our list of favourites. We just hope they were written on an old-fashioned typewriter that goes ‘ping!’ at the end of each line…

Mrs Pollifax

Created by novelist Dorothy Gilman, Mrs Emily Pollifax is a widow from New Brunswick, New Jersey. Decided that her Garden Club meetings weren’t quite enough of a highlight in her life, Mrs Pollifax decided to join the CIA, and thus began over thirty years of adventures all over the world – proving that you don’t have to wear sharp suits and quaff shaken martinis to be a successful spy. She was brought to life on screen by Rosalind Russell and (yes – again!) Angela Lansbury.

Agatha Raisin

Taking early retirement from her career as a public relations agent in London, Agatha Raisin probably expected a quiet life in the Cotswold village of Carsley, but an encounter with a poisoned quiche soon put paid to that plan. Author Marion Chesney (writing as M.C. Beaton) has been delighting readers with Agatha’s exploits since 1992, and Ashley Jensen starred as Agatha in a series broadcast on Sky TV in 2016.

Miss Seeton

We couldn’t end without praising our own local heroine, Miss Emily Seeton, retired art teacher and umbrella-wielding crime fighter of Plummergen, Kent. Created by actor Heron Carvic in the late 1960s, she has appeared in more than twenty books, and has enchanted generations of cosy crime readers.

Miss Seeton is back, in a brand-new mystery entitled Miss Seeton Quilts the Village, by Hamilton Crane – the first in almost 20 years! It’s available in print and ebook editions, and also an audiobook recorded by the wonderful Phyllida Nash – and stay tuned for new of Miss Seeton’s next adventure, coming in 2018…

Who’s your favourite female sleuth? Drop us a line on Twitter at @farragobooks or on Facebook at Farrago Books. And remember: keep ’em peeled!