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Whodunnit? The Femme Fatale

Sarah Paretsky identifies the "four Vs" of female characters in 1930s detective fiction

Sarah Paretsky identifies the "four Vs" of female character types in 1930s detective fiction: victims, virgins, villains and vamps. And why she created her female private eye V.I. Warshawski in response to the femmes fatales of Raymond Chandler – "in six of his seven novels, it's a sexually active woman who lies behind all the mayhem."

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23 minutes

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ World Service Archive

This programme was restored as part of the World Service archive project