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(2010) Women writers and detectives in nineteenth-century crime fiction, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
"Cherchez la femme" is an oft-repeated phrase in mystery and detective fiction. It first appeared in Alexandre Dumas' 1854–7 novel Les Mohicans de Paris as "Cherchons la femme", words spoken by M. Jackal, a police detective. The subsequent popular listings could fill a book: they range from James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia to Churchy La Femme in the comic Pogo. Typically the phrase has a function. It signals the entry of a female character — into a narrative previously masculine in content. The (male) detective has not solved a mystery, and the answer lies with a woman. "Cherchez la femme", the search for her, re-genders the text.
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Sussex, L. (2010). Introduction: look for the women, in Women writers and detectives in nineteenth-century crime fiction, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1-5.
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