What happens when a man writes a crime thriller with a female lead character
Historian Fern Riddell shared this passage from a crime thriller she was reading and it went viral because the (male) author did such an extraordinary job of writing the lead (female) character.
Seriously. Have a read for yourself.
I am reading a crime thriller written by a man. His lead is a female journalist whose sister has just been murdered by a serial killer. She’s been up for 3 days straight hunting down leads because the police won’t do anything, and yet… pic.twitter.com/GKkkO8afB7
— Dr Fern Riddell (@FernRiddell) April 21, 2018
It went madly viral, shared 10,000 times on Twitter and liked by another 40,000 people. Here’s a flavour of how people responded online.
1.
Or “she looked in the mirror – she looked like a sack of shit. She didn’t give a fuck because her sister was dead. If a man had given her the come on she would have caved his skull on with a claw hammer.”
— Alexandra Churchill (@churchill_alex) April 21, 2018
2.
I am going to write a series of thrillers where a not super skinny woman goes round fighting crime with no intention of finding a man and lives on kebabs
— Alexandra Churchill (@churchill_alex) April 21, 2018
3.
Has any woman ever looked at her eyes, or more accurately, the circles under them, and thought DAMN NOW THAT IS WHAT I’D CALL SULTRY
— Halley Sutton (@halley_sutton) April 21, 2018
4.
From now on I’m going to turn to my partner when I’m exhausted and feeling like crap, bat my eyelashes and sultrily say “THESE ARE ARE MY COME TO BED EYES LET’S GO SLEEP.”
— Mariah McCourt (@TiredFairy) April 22, 2018
5.
‘GET THAT SULTRY COME TO BED DARK CIRCLES LOOK FROM THE EMOTIONAL TRAUMA YOU DESERVE’
— Dr Fern Riddell (@FernRiddell) April 21, 2018
6.
“Holmes, straightening the deerstalker, chanced upon his aquiline features in the mirror. Somehow, amidst the smoking ruins of the bank vault, he retained a finely chiselled jaw and his unmentionables betrayed a pleasing gentle prominence. ‘Dash it all,’ he thought. ‘I’m good.'”
— Lee Jackson (@VictorianLondon) April 22, 2018
7.
Please tell me you threw it away at this point.
— Vanessa (@HPS_Vanessa) April 21, 2018
8.
Currently pic.twitter.com/5C6BltVErI
— Dr Fern Riddell (@FernRiddell) April 21, 2018
9.
Don’t tell me, she breasted boobily down the stairs next!
— Jeanna Louise Skinner (@JeannaLStars) April 21, 2018
10.
— Jeanna Louise Skinner (@JeannaLStars) April 21, 2018
11.
Do you know how many times John Grisham brings up Darby Shaw being 5’9″ and 112 lbs in ‘Pelican Brief’? Three times. I counted it by the number of times I threw the book.
— Jen (@26hrcharleston) April 21, 2018
12.
Up once over 2 days due to a family crisis-I may have hallucinated. Another time I had only 2 hours sleep after working on a huge project for work- had trouble figuring out how to pump gas. But I want it known to every man I was TOTALLY up for it.
— Sherry (@lamb_sherry) April 21, 2018
13.
make men stop
— Sarah Phelps (@PhelpsieSarah) April 21, 2018
14.
Seriously? “Hey my sister is dead but look at these sexy eyes, amirite?”
— Ayla O’Donovan (@AylaOdd) April 21, 2018
15.
JUST SAY SHE CHANGED HER CLOTHES AND LEFT
— ℭ (@connorthellama4) April 22, 2018
16.
“In spite of everything, the gorgeous woman was still aware she had a vagina, which is all that matters at the end of the day”
— lenny biscuits (@AJVGriff) April 22, 2018
