I think Elizabeth George does a great job with Inspector Lynley. Also Kate Atkinson with Jackson Brodie and Ruth Rendell with Wexford. Who else writes a believable male?
Sunday, October 13, 2013
What Female Writers Write the Most Convincing Males?
I am going to go out on a limb here and say Hercule Poirot, although an interesting character, never seemed quite like a man to me. Christie dodged it by making him "foreign" and full of tics and oddities that kept you from noticing that. She also had plots that kept you involved enough to not care. . I am sure some of you will disagree.
I think Elizabeth George does a great job with Inspector Lynley. Also Kate Atkinson with Jackson Brodie and Ruth Rendell with Wexford. Who else writes a believable male?
I think Elizabeth George does a great job with Inspector Lynley. Also Kate Atkinson with Jackson Brodie and Ruth Rendell with Wexford. Who else writes a believable male?
Patti - That's a really interesting question! Hmmm...For people who like cosy mysteries, I thought Lilian Jackson Braun wrote a decent male protagonist Jim Qwilleran. And Karin Fossum's Konrad Sejer is well-done too I think.
ReplyDeleteLove Karin Fossum. Have never read Braun.
ReplyDeletePatricia Highsmith creates a very convincing Tom Ripley. Alice Munro's men sound realistic to me.
ReplyDeletePatricia Highsmith, for sure. As to Rendell, I think her non-Wexford characters are more well drawn, but she's up there. I don't read very many female authors, I realize, so I can't contribute much more.
ReplyDeleteFrom the books I have read, Agatha Christie and Anne Tyler.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if men and women would come up with very different sorts of lists about this.
ReplyDeleteFlannery O'Connor
ReplyDeleteI agree with Rendell, but I actually think the books she writes under her alternate pen name, Barbara Vine, feature even more interesting male characters: complicated, damaged, limited by events and their own lack of full self-awareness.
ReplyDeleteDeb
I just thought of Hilary Mantel.
ReplyDeleteI posted this morning a little while after George's post but what happened to it?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, since no one else has mentioned them I'll repeat them:
Margaret Maron
S. J. Rozan
P. D. James
Marcia Muller
Jeff M.
I got the emai, Jeff but they disappeared.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was only happening to me. I post something; it appears to have posted, but when I check back in later, it's gone. Very puzzling.
ReplyDeleteDeb
Sorry you guys are disappearing. Even one of my own comments did. Hope it gets straightened out.
ReplyDeleteYes, Anne Tyler is very good at male voices. And Bobbie Ann Mason.
Patti, I'd have to put your name in that hat.
ReplyDeleteWell, on that kind note, I will go to bed. Thanks, Heath!
ReplyDeleteI'll go back a ways. C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, Andre Norton.
ReplyDeleteHighsmith, Dorothy B Hughes, Elisabeth Sanxay Holding... Dare I go on?
ReplyDeleteOne of the best I've read this year was Virginia Perdue's 60 year old protagonist in ALARUM & EXCURSION. Spot on and still rings true decades after she created him.
Yes, Ruth Rendell, and P.D. James.
ReplyDeleteLaurie R. King writes a fabulous Sherlock Holmes and other male characters.
ReplyDeleteNaomi Novik writes a dynamite Captain Will Laurence.
Georgette Heyer too, wrote fabulous men.