Do you remember that fun old movie about pioneers of aviation? Actually several of the most daring, most accomplished flyers in the early days of aviation were women. Everyone in America knows Amelia Earhart and everyone in Britain knows Amy Johnson. These two women set incredible records, not equaled by men. Amy Johnson was the first person to fly solo from London to Australia, in a Gypsy Moth airplane—open cockpit, literally tied together with string and paper wings. If she had crashed in the desert there would have been no hope of rescue.
Amelia, of course, did pay the ultimate sacrifice when attempting to cross the Pacific.
I’m mentioning these women because I write about feisty females in the early twentieth century. Not that Molly Murphy is anything as glamorous as an aviatrix (as they were then known). But she’s a female detective—a profession definitely thought then to be an unsuitable job for a woman. I get letters telling me that no woman could really have done the things that Molly does. Women at the time were helpless creatures, dainty, wafting their smelling salts.
