Feminist Fiction Friday: Liza Cody

I am going to Bouchercon 2012 this year and am very excited. But I wish I'd been there last year when Liza Cody was there and taking part in panels like "Telling Women's Stories." (She refers to it as "the inevitable feminist panel.")
I love Liza Cody's series protagonist Anna Lee and her novel Dupe (which, according to Wikipedia introduced the professional female private detective to British Mystery fiction) was the first I ever read. Cody also has a series about professional female wrestler, Eva Wylie. I've not read any of those books because the backdrop doesn't interest me, but I'll get around to them at some  point.
I love that Anna Lee is smart and savvy and totally real. It's an ongoing complaint that there aren't enough female protagonists in crime fiction, and I always point people toward Liza Cody in response.

Feminist Fiction Friday: Edna Buchanan

Photo by Jim Virga/courtesy of Simon & Schuster

In 1986, when I was a newly minted reporter covering total fluff, Edna Buchanan won a Pulitzer Prize for her general assignment reporting at the Miami Herald. The following year she published one of my all-time favorite true-crime books, The Corpse Had a Familiar Face, which was followed in 1992 by Never Let Them See You Cry. Corpse was turned into a television movie in 1994, with Elizabeth Montgomery playing Edna. A terrific reporter, Edna was also a style icon (and still is), rocking big hair and basic black. She covered more than 3,000 murders in her career while looking like the star of her own television series. I wanted to be Edna Buchanan when I grew up. (At the time, the only two women I knew who were writing true-crime were Edna and Ann Rule, also a terrific writer. Other women have since joined the team but the alphabetical list of women true crime writers begins with Ann and Buchanan.)
So I was already a fan of Buchanan's when she published her first novel, Nobody Lives Forever, I was onboard.  And then she created the character many people think is her alter-ego, Cuban-American newspaper reporter Britt Montero who made her debut in Contents Under Pressure.  Britt, with her take no prisoners attitude and deep suspicion of editors, is a terrific character. With Britt, Edna hit her stride as a novelist  The second book in the series, Miami, It's Murder, was nominated for an Edgar Award.
Her most recent book, A Dark and Lonely Place, came out in November of last year. It's based on a true story from Miami's history a century ago and is a change of pace for her, although it is crime fiction.
Edna's official website is here
She is @ednabmiami on Twitter (although she's not terribly active).