As a companion to an earlier post about my favourite British mystery series, here are my favorites from the USA. These are all written by women, and they all have female main characters. (There are a couple of couples, but they carry equal weight in the stories.) Strong female main characters. I don’t like wimpy heroines in need of constant rescuing. I like a good setting I can really sink into. Some of these series I read primarily for the setting. The mystery is just icing on the cake. Good, snappy dialog and a bit of humor are always appreciated. There are many mysteries — many books — that meet those criteria. So what makes these my favorites? I try to spell it out here.
In researching this post I looked up author blogs. That sent me down several rabbit holes; I’ll have to revisit them. I’ve included links here to those. Book covers are the first book in the series.
Completed Series
All of these authors have all died (sob), so these series are complete. Losing a great author means losing a great mind and the friends (characters) they create.
Kate Fansler
Author: Amanda Cross
Setting: New York City
Main character: English professor
Books in series: 12-15, depending on who’s counting
Amanda Cross is the pseudonym of Carolyn G. Heilbrun, a female academic and feminist author. She wrote under a pen name to protect her academic reputation. Kate Fansler is, like the author, an English professor. She’s witty, intelligent, opinionated, and enjoys a good drink. Her background is posh but her values are not. The books were originally published between 1964-2002 and most take place within academia. I have read all of them at least twice. They’re intellectual rather than thrilling, and fairly brief. And since I just found out she wrote a book about life after 60, I bought that too.
I got my masters in English, and toyed with the idea of a PhD. So I enjoyed the academic setting. The fantasy of living in a Manhattan apartment and having nightly adult beverages while making good trouble appeals too. Very civilized. Kind of reminds me of The Spare Man, other than the setting.
Skip Langdon
Author: Julie Smith
Setting: New Orleans
Main character: Police detective
Books in series: 11
Julie Smith has written three mystery series. While I’ve read at least some of each series, the Skip Langdon series is my favorite, featuring a 6’ tall female police officer in New Orleans. Love the setting and the supporting cast, and Skip herself breaks most of the molds and the rules. She’s another that comes from a wealthy background but questions its priorities. The first book, New Orleans Mourning, won the Edgar award.
I love the quirky characters here, and the quirky city. The whole New Orleans melting pot thing has always fascinated me.
Barbara Holloway
Author: Kate Wilhelm
Setting: Eugene, Oregon
Main character: Defense Attorney
Books in series. 14
I don’t usually do legal-based books. Here it’s fun watching her build a case and then present it. Reminds me of old Perry Mason shows. These books were published between 1991-2017. Kate Wilhelm also writes science fiction/fantasy, and is in fact a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, and won the Hugo and Nebula awards for Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang. Which I should probably re-read; I remember liking it.
Barbara is very much a champion of the dispossessed and does regular pro bono work. She’s very close to her father and reading about their family meals makes me want to cook.
Deborah Knott
Author: Margaret Maron
Setting: Small-town North Carolina
Main character: Attorney then Judge
Books in series: 20
The intriguingly named Bootlegger’s Daughter, the first in the series, won multiple awards for best mystery novel. Other novels in the series were nominated for or won awards. These books were published between 1992-2015. The small-town Southern setting feels right — I only went to college down there for a year, I’m not an expert — with its dizzying cast of family members and friends. While the main character is a judge, the mysteries don’t stem from her cases.
Maron also has a series set in New York City featuring a police detective. I read a couple of those but didn’t like it as much as the Deborah Knott series. There is a crossover novel.
Kinsey Millhone (Alphabet Mysteries)
Author: Sue Grafton
Setting: Southern California; fictional Santa Barbara
Main character: Private Investigator
Books in Series: 25
These books were published between 1982-2017, though they’re all set in the 1980s. (Kinsey just doesn’t age like the rest of us.) Sue Grafton is so well known I don’t feel like I can add much. Many books in the series were nominated for or won awards, and her former publisher has established a new award in her honor.
Ongoing(?) Series
Because often you just don’t know when something has ended. I’m sure Sue Grafton wanted to make it to Z is for ???? The number of books shown is as of when this post was written.
V. I. Warshawski
Author: Sara Paretsky
Setting: Chicago
Main character: Former attorney now private investigator
Books in series: 22
V. I. (Victoria Iphigenia) is probably a love-her-or-hate-her character. She has many loyalties and a lot of people that want to tell her what to do. (And she doesn’t want to hear it.) She can be impulsive. She champions underdogs. She also sings opera and wears expensive heels. Many of the stories lead to uncovering corruption in various industries and institutions, and feature regular people caught up in the mess. Like Kinsey Millhone — who V. I. references once, wishing she were as organized — V. I. has other more mundane cases like background checks to work around. Like the Kinsey Millhone series these too were published starting in 1982. Some books in this series are very dark. I haven’t read the most recent four books yet. (I need to be prepared for the darkness.) Several have been nominated for or won awards. Being a midwestern native, I enjoy the Chicago setting, and seeing sides of it that I wouldn’t as a visitor.
Author blog: saraparetsky.com
Anna Pigeon
Author: Nevada Barr
Setting: US National Parks
Main character: Park Ranger
Books in series: 19
Anna Pigeon is another difficult and interesting character. She’s very much a loner and has a lot of baggage. It’s both painful and heartening watching her character develop. Track of the Cat, the first book in the series, published in 1993, won awards for best first novel. The national park settings keep the series fresh. (And make me want to visit the parks!) The National Parks Conservation Association gave her an award too. I haven’t read the most recent book yet. (Note that book #17 is a prequel to the series. I wouldn’t recommend reading it first, though.)
Kate Shugak
Author: Dana Stabenow
Setting: Alaska
Main character: Private Investigator, former DA investigator
Books in series: 23
I love this setting so much we’re going to visit Wrangell-St Elias National Park when we go to Alaska. Most of the action takes place in “The Park,” though other places around Alaska are featured. Kate is one tough, lovable bitch, and her sidekick half wolf/half dog Mutt is the best. The first book in the series was published in 1992. Stabenow has a second, shorter Alaska series based on an Alaska State Trooper, a couple of standalone Alaska thrillers, plus a mystery series set during Cleopatra’s era in Egypt, a historical series about Marco Polo’s granddaughter, and a science fiction series. They’re all good. I’ll read anything Dana Stabenow writes.
The books explore different facets of Alaskan life: city life in Anchorage, mining, commercial fishing, homesteading … I feel like I learn a lot about Alaska through reading these.
Author blog: blog.stabenow.com
Joanna Brady
Author: J. A. Jance
Setting: Bisbee, Arizona
Main character: County Sheriff
Books in series: 21
Joanna Brady is less prickly though equally determined, and the Arizona setting really comes through in this series, which first came out in 1993. (We like Arizona a lot and thought about moving there at one point.) Unlike the other main characters here, Joanna Brady is a mother, and her homelife features in the stories. Jance herself says:
As a writer, I try not to be too buoyed by good reviews or too devastated by bad ones, but there was one review that came in on the Joanna Brady books that is still engraved on my heart. It came from Mostly Murder. “Every woman in America is obviously not a sheriff, but Joanna Brady is every woman.” Thank you, Mostly Murder.
Jance’s first major series — first published in 1985 — is set in Seattle and features a male homicide detective. She was advised to write under her initials to downplay the fact she was female. She also has another Arizona-based series about a former newscaster. I read the first of those; I didn’t realize there are now 19 books in that series! And there’s a third Arizona series with a half-dozen books. Dang that’s a lot of books! Surprisingly, J. A. Jance had never won an award until 2014 when she was a guest of honor.
If that’s not enough Arizona for you, there are a couple of good series by Sinclair Browning (set in the Tucson area) and Betsy Thornton (like the Joanna Brady series, also set in Cochise County).
Author blog: jajanceauthor.com
The Rev. Clare Fergusson & Russ Van Alstyne
Author: Julia Spencer-Fleming
Setting: Small-town upstate New York
Main characters: Episcopal Priest and Police Chief
Books in series: 10
These are more recent than some of the other series here, first published in 2002. Claire and Russ are definitely an odd couple and have pretty equal billing when it comes to solving mysteries, making this series an interesting blend of police procedural and amateur sleuth. They’re both combat vets so they have that in common. The first novel in the series, In the Bleak Midwinter, won several awards. All Mortal Flesh also won two awards.
Not being a religious person, I wasn’t sure I could relate to a priestly main character, but Clare is definitely not a conservative priest. Other members of the police force play major roles; the books aren’t hyper-focused on Clare and Russ, though their relationship is entertaining.
Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes
Author: Laurie R King
Setting: Based in England, but novels set world-wide
Main characters: Private Detectives
Books in series: 19
Another couple in this excellent historical series about Sherlock Holmes and his equally fascinating wife Mary Russell. Lots of undercover work, exotic locales, and celebrity cameos. It was tough deciding whether to group this with the British mystery series or the USA series. I ended up including it here since the author is from the USA and the books are not all set in the United Kingdom.
She’s written another couple of series and some standalone novels. They’re all great, and very different from each other. Her first novel, A Grave Talent, part of the Kate Martinelli series, won two awards for best first novel. Another in that series won an award for Best Lesbian Mystery.
Author blog: laurierking.com
Some comments on a few more long-running series:
- Marcia Muller and her Sharon McCone series are often credited with introducing the female hard-boiled detective. I’ve read most of the series and will probably continue with it. I do prefer the earlier books. I prefer the helping-the-downtrodden to the private planes and international security companies in the later books.
- I continue to enjoy Kathy Reich’s Temperance Brennan series, though I don’t feel the same “must read NOW” impulse of most of my favorites above. Like the V. I. Warshawski series this one is often quite dark, though in a different way. I have to be in the mood. And I don’t get the sense of place that my favorite series have, perhaps because some of the action is in Montreal and some in Charlotte, North Carolina.
- I really enjoyed the first few books in the Kay Scarpetta series by Patricia Cornwell. (The first book, Postmortem, is particularly creepy.) I started losing interest along the way, when it seemed like the focus was on Kay’s personal enemies rather than cases at hand.
- Mary Willis Walker only wrote four books, but they were all great. I wish she’d written more.
And lastly, I want to mention By a Woman’s Hand: A Guide to Mystery Fiction by Women, by Dean A. James and Jean Swanson. It came out in 1994 so it’s very dated at this point — I bought it back when it was new — but it’s an excellent resource for finding other mystery writers and series based on what you already know and like. It was one of the inspirations for this blog, though I’ve fallen well short of achieving anything like the authors did! So much great cross-referencing.