This view is challenged by several factors. One is the readership of crime fiction. From the cosy Golden Age stories through to contemporary authors such as Partricia Cornwell women account for a large portion of sales. It might be suggested that this is false consciousness, women self-destructively consuming culture which disempowers them. Or perhaps the situation is more complex.
Women are largely absent from early crime stories, except as victims to be championed by detectives.
One notable exception is the Sherlock Holmes story A Scandal in Bohemia where Holmes tangles with a female rival, Irene Adler, the only opponent ever to best him. Whether his admission of defeat has more to do with Victorian notions of chivalry than any pro-feminist sentiment, the fact remains that a strong female character exists even in that era. The most successful Golden Age writers were all women and many of them created female detectives such as Christie s Miss Marple or Sayer s Harriet Vane, after tiring of male sleuths. Also at this time female criminals featured more prominently although this tied largely into the puzzle presumption that anyone could be the killer and twisting an audience s gender role assumptions was a good way to fool them. Hardboiled fiction had its origins in masculine pulp adventure stories and, until the 1980s did not feature female detectives at all.