5 Kick-Ass Women Who Inspired Clare Carlson
By R. G. Belsky
January 3, 2024
My series character Clare Carlson, a TV journalist who stars in the latest book Broadcast Blues, is a pretty terrific, pretty cool woman—if I do say so myself.
I based her in large part on many of the pretty terrific, pretty cool real life woman journalists that I have worked with myself over the years in the New York City media world.
But Clare wouldn’t exist today without the input I got from other places—most notably some of the great kick-ass women characters I’ve read in other mystery novels since I started writing them myself.
Sure, there’s a lot of great male characters I’ve drawn on for creating Clare—Philip Marlowe, Spenser, Harry Bosch, Matt Scudder and many more.
Still, it is the women characters I’ve read in mystery novels—and there are a lot of them these days— that really helped me make Clare come alive.
Here are five of them:
KINSEY MILLHONE—I fell in love with Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone all the way back at the beginning of the alphabet. You only have to read the opening lines of A Is For Alibi to know what a compelling character she is: “My name is Kinsey Millhone. I’m a private investigator, licensed by the state of California. I’m thirty-two years old, twice divorced, no kids. The day before yesterday I killed someone and the fact weighs heavily on my mind.” We got 24 more books – all the way to Y is for Yesterday – before Sue Grafton’s untimely death. But Kinsey Millhone lives on for us.
V.I. WARSHAWSKI—Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski, a tough talking, always ready for action, private investigator from Chicago—like Kinsey—pretty much pioneered the way for women investigators in mystery novels. Until then, most of the heroes were men. I had the opportunity to interview Paretsky not long ago and she explained how her inspiration for Warshawski came from seeing how women were being portrayed at the time in male-dominated books. “A woman in fiction then was a virgin, a vamp, or a victim—never a person who could solve problems. I wanted to create that kind of woman. The big thing V. I. does is have a voice and force people to listen. She doesn’t go into a diner and say, ‘make my day.’ But she enrages people with power and that’s what causes violence—her voice, not her actions.” But yes, V.I. handles herself pretty well in physical confrontations too!
STEPHANIE PLUM—There’ve been plenty of bounty hunters in books, but not female bounty hunters—until Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum came along. This is one tough woman. She’s been described as a “bounty hunter with attitude.” As “a combination of Nancy Drew and Dirty Harry.” The result has been more than 100 million copies sold of the Stephanie Plum books so far. I should add a personal note here. My first published novel in 1985 was called One for the Money. That was also the title for the first Stephanie Plum book that came out several years later. When I saw that, I wondered who this author was using the same title as me? Well, let’s just say she did a lot better with it than me!
TEMPERANCE BRENNAN—It’s hard not to think of Temperance Brennan without imagining her as Emily Deschanel, who plays Kathy Reichs’ forensic anthropologist on the long-running TV series Bones. But it all began with the popular long running book series from Reichs.
Temperance Brennan—or Tempe, as she is called—is a brilliant, tough and no-nonsense medical expert brought into crime scenes to solve the biggest and most baffling cases. Many have compared the fascinating Temperance Brennan character to Reichs herself, who is a forensic anthropologist herself in real life who has worked on numerous crime scenes. No matter how she was created, Temperance (Tempe) Brennan is one of the most popular and appealing characters in mystery fiction today.
JANE RIZZOLI—Like Temperance Brennan, hard-driving Boston detective Jane Rizzoli is well known to us from a TV show, Rizzoli and Isles—where she’s played wonderfully by Angie Harmon—as well as the best-selling book series by Tess Gerritsen. But make no mistake about it, the Gerritsen books are the real deal if you want to know to get to know Jane Rizzoli (as well as her fascinating woman partner, medical examiner Maura Isles). Gerritsen has revealed that she actually planned to kill off Rizzoli in her first book because she thought she was too “annoying”—but then changed her mind. “I got to like her. She’s similar to me, an outsider who never feels like she fits in. … I identified with her so much that when it came time to kill her it seemed wrong.”
Kinsey Millhone. V.I. Warshawski. Stephanie Plum. Temperance Brennan. Jane Rizzoli. Five women mystery characters that readers love. I love them too. And I like to think that if my Clare Carlson ever hooked up with these women somehow…well, they’d all get along pretty well!