The Best Female Detectives in Fiction Written by Women

Sarah Toomey is a successful young Black lawyer, lovely but straitlaced –  and afraid that she is losing her mind. Yvonne Howard was born into the working class. Now, after years as a prison guard, she has reinvented herself until an ex-inmate named Bitty appears, demanding Yvonne’s help investigating her brother’s shocking death. Before long, Bitty too is dead, and Yvonne is pulled back into a world of ugly violence. Smart but unschooled, Yvonne finds herself in the unlikely role of detective: it is she who must unravel the dark and blood-soaked history that not only doomed Bitty and her brother but also determined beautiful Sarah Toomey’s fate.

The inspiration behind TNT’s hit show Rizzoli & Isles, Tess Gerritsen’s New York Times bestselling thrillers featuring Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles just keep getting better. In I Know a Secret, they continue their bestselling crime-solving streak, as they pursue a shadowy psychopath keeping secrets and taking lives.

In the heart of Harlem, young black women like Louise Lloyd are ending up dead. As each new victim appears, Louise’s neighborhood becomes more on edge. After an altercation with a police officer gets Louise arrested, she is given an ultimatum; help the police solve the case, or end up in a jail cell. Louise has no choice but to look into these murders, but in doing so, has put herself in the path of a murderous mastermind.

Nicole “Nic” Monroe is in a rut. Everyone has felt sorry for her for the last seven years — since the day her older sister, Kasey, vanished without a trace. The only real clue in her disappearance was Jules Connor, another young woman from the same area who disappeared in the same way, two weeks earlier. Nic wants nothing more than to move on from her sister’s disappearance and the state it’s left her in. But then one day, Jules’s sister, Jenna Connor, walks into Nic’s life and offers her something she hasn’t felt in a long time: hope. What follows is a gripping tale of two sisters who will do anything to find their missing halves, even if it means destroying everything they’ve ever known.

At rock bottom following her daughter’s death, ex–Chicago detective Carrie Starr has nowhere to go but back to her roots. Starr’s father never talked much about the reservation where he was raised, but the tribe needs a new marshal as much as Starr needs a place to call home. In the past decade, too many young women have disappeared from the rez. Some have ended up dead, others just … gone. Now local college student Chenoa Cloud is missing, and Starr falls into an investigation that leaves her drowning in memories of her daughter — the girl she failed to save.

Molly Gray is not like everyone else. She struggles with social skills and misreads the intentions of others. Her unique character, along with her obsessive love of cleaning and proper etiquette, make her an ideal fit for her job as a hotel maid. But Molly’s orderly life is upended the day she enters the suite of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black, only to find him dead in his bed. Before she knows what’s happening, Molly’s unusual demeanor has the police targeting her as their lead suspect.  Fortunately for Molly, friends she never knew she had unite with her in a search for clues to what really happened to Mr. Black — but will they be able to find the real killer before it’s too late?

From the bestselling author of Mexican Gothic comes a riveting story about a daydreaming secretary, a lonesome enforcer, and the mystery of a missing woman they’re both desperate to find. This is an edgy, simmering historical novel for lovers of smoky noirs and anti-heroes.

After her role in taking down a well-placed mole inside the CIA, Agent Lyndsey Duncan arrives in London fully focused on her newest Russian asset, deadly war criminal Dmitri Tarasenko. That is until her MI6 counterpart, Davis Ranford, personally calls for her help. Following a suspicious attack on Russian oligarch Mikhail Rotenberg’s property in a tony part of London, Davis needs Lyndsey to cozy up to the billionaire’s aristocratic British wife, Emily Rotenberg. But before Lyndsey can cover much ground with her newfound friend, the CIA unveils a perturbing connection between Mikhail and Russia’s geoplitical past, one that could upend the world order and jeopardize Lyndsey’s longtime allegiance to the Agency.

Sue Grafton’s long-running Kinsey Millhone novels, also known as the “alphabet mysteries,” introduced mystery fans to Ms. Millhone, a hard-boiled private detective from fictional Santa Teresa, California, in 1982. With Grafton’s latest, Y is for Yesterday, there’s no better time to dive into Santa Teresa’s decidedly sordid criminal underworld.

A searing and tender novel about a young Black journalist’s search for answers in the unsolved murder of her great-grandfather in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, decades ago — inspired by the author’s own family history.

It’s been three years since food anthropologist and cooking show star Miriam Quiñones-Smith had her last brush with death. Her Spanglish culinary show, Abuela Approved, is topping the charts. Her parents are back in Miami and living with her in Coral Shores. And her kids are great. But when bones start popping up in unexpected places, Miriam’s idyllic life is threatened. To protect her family and friends, Miriam must dig up the truth that has been hiding in plain sight.

At 39, Manon Bradshaw is a devoted and respected member of the Cambridgeshire police force, and though she loves her job, what she longs for is a personal life. One night, after yet another disastrous Internet date, she turns on her police radio to help herself fall asleep — and receives an alert that sends her to a puzzling crime scene. Suspenseful and keenly observed, Missing, Presumed is a brilliantly twisting novel about how we seek connection, grant forgiveness, and reveal the truth about who we are.

Claudia Lin is an amateur sleuth in the 21st century. Claudia just landed her dream job working for Veracity, a referrals-only online dating site. Her job is to verify that people really are who they say they are. But when one of her clients disappears, Claudia breaks protocol to investigate and winds up in over her head.

Vera Wong is a lonely little old lady who lives above her forgotten tea shop in the middle of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Then one morning, Vera trudges downstairs to find a dead man in the middle of her tea shop. In his outstretched hand, a flash drive. Vera doesn’t know what comes over her, but after calling the cops, she swipes the flash drive from the body and tucks it safely into the pocket of her apron. Why? Because Vera is sure she would do a better job than the police possibly could. Vera knows the killer will be back for the flash drive; all she has to do is watch the increasing number of customers at her shop and figure out which one among them is the killer.

With her inquisitive mind, Charlotte Holmes has never felt comfortable with the demureness expected of the fairer sex in upper-class society. So, when the city is struck by a trio of unexpected deaths and suspicion falls on her sister and her father, Charlotte is desperate to find the true culprits and clear the family name. She’ll have help from friends new and old — a kind-hearted widow, a police inspector, and a man who has long loved her. But in the end, it will be up to Charlotte, under the assumed name Sherlock Holmes, to challenge society’s expectations and match wits against an unseen mastermind.

Being on the Murder Squad is nothing like Detective Antoinette Conway dreamed it would be. Her partner, Stephen Moran, is the only person who seems glad she’s there. The rest of her working life is a stream of thankless cases, vicious pranks, and harassment. After complications with a new case, she wonders if it’s just another step in the campaign to force her off the squad, or are there darker currents flowing beneath its polished surface?

Liz Rocher is coming home for her best friend’s wedding. But on the day of the wedding, the couple’s daughter, Caroline, disappears. As a frantic search begins, with the police combing the trees for Caroline, Liz is the only one who notices a pattern: A summer night. A missing girl. A party in the woods. She’s seen this before. As Liz starts to dig through the town’s history, she uncovers a horrifying secret about the place she once called home. Children have been going missing in these woods for years. All of them Black. All of them girls. With the evil in the forest creeping closer, Liz knows what she must do: find Caroline, or be entirely consumed by the darkness.

Stephanie Plum, a detective somewhere on a spectrum that runs from Nancy Drew to Dirty Harry, is the occasionally hapless, always resourceful bounty hunter at the center of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series. Looking for a way to make ends meet, Plum, a former lingerie buyer, once blackmailed her way into a bounty hunting job as part of her cousin’s bail bond business. Myriad hijinks have since ensued.

Widow and former suffragist Harriet Gordon looks for a fresh start in 1920s Singapore and stumbles into murder in her new home. In Revenge in Rubies, when Harriet Gordon receives word from a friend about a tragic death, she and Inspector Curran are thrust into a web of family secrets that threatens to destroy them both in this all-new mystery from the author of Singapore Sapphire.

Frankie Elkin has a knack for finding missing people. So when she reads about Timothy O’Day, a young man who disappeared in the wilderness of Wyoming, she joins the search team. But as they hike into the mountains, it becomes clear that there’s something dangerous at work in the woods … or someone who is willing to do anything to stop them from going any further.

This is an entry in another regional noir subgenres — Nordic Noir. It’s a genre well-known for its dense plotting, brutal crimes, tortured protagonists, and bleak themes. Asa Larsson’s Sun Storm is no different and attorney Rebecka Martinsson is as tortured as they come. In this latest installment in the series, Martinsson returns to the hometown she left in disgrace to confront her own dark past amid a series of vicious murders.

Armed with only hazy memories, a woman who long ago witnessed her friend’s sudden, mysterious death, and has since spent her life trying to forget, sets out to track down answers. What she uncovers, deep in the woods, is hard to believe.

Lady Georgiana Rannoch is an amateur sleuth and professional member of the British Royal family, solving crimes in 1930s England. In The Last Mrs. Summers, she’s just back from her honeymoon with dashing Darcy O’Mara when a friend in need pulls her into a twisted Gothic tale of betrayal, deception and, most definitely, murder.