The female private investigator, as opposed to the amateur sleuth, has been a relatively rare occurrence in crime fiction but she has popped up here and there. Loveday Brooke is an early “lady detective” created by Catherine Louisa Pirkis in 1894. Canadian writer Hulbert Footner wrote a number of stories about Rosika Storey, a flapper era private investigator, published between 1922 to 1935. Miss Maude Silver, governess turned private investigator, first appeared in 1928. Nancy Drew, who worked alongside her PI father Carson Drew, investigated her first case in print in 1930. Bertha Cool owned a PI agency in the 1939 beginning of the Cool and Lam series written by A.A. Fair. And in 1940 Torrey Chanslor created Amanda and Lutie Beagle, two sisters who inherited a detective agency.

For some reason, though, the concept of a woman private investigator caught on like wildfire in the 1980s; 1982 was a banner year. While Sharon McCone made her first appearance in 1977, Marcia Muller did not release the second title until five years later (and then she made up for lost time and published eight more books in the series between 1982 and 1989). The same year, 1982, Kinsey Milhone made her debut, as did Vic Warshawski, and on television Remington Steele started its five-year run.   

English crime novelist Liza Cody started a series about PI Anna Lee in 1980. Kate Baeier is a London private investigator in books by Gillian Slovo launched in 1984. Mary Wings began writing about San Francisco PI Emma Victor in 1986, and Australian Marele Day developed a series about Claudia Valentine, a Sydney PI in 1988. Karen Kijewski won an Anthony for her 1989 crime novel about Kat Colorado, a private investigator in Sacramento, California.

Also on TV was Claire McCarron, a PI in New York in the short-lived 1987 CBS series Leg Work. Starting in 1985 on ABC Cybill Shepherd played Maddie Hayes, owner of the Blue Moon Detective Agency in Moonlighting, with one of my favorite songs as its theme. Their predecessor was Honey West, a 1950s PI in 11 books by Gloria and Forest Fickling that were adapted for television. Honey West was memorably played by Anne Francis on the 1965-1966 ABC show.

This week’s forgotten book is about another female private eye from the 1980s, Carlotta Carlyle, the six-foot tall former cabbie and cop with flaming red hair from Linda Barnes. Her creative depiction of a modern PI first appeared in A Trouble of Fools (St. Martins, 1987). Carlotta gets a new client via her old boss at the Green and White Cab Company while looking at an offer of $20,000 in return for a visit from her and her husband T.C. Carlyle to a time-share resort. Her telephone is indeed listed in the name T.C. Carlyle but in this case the initials stand for Tom Cat. Carlotta listed her phone in her cat’s name to avoid nuisance calls. While trying to think of someone who could pass as T.C. Carlyle, she could really use that money, Carlotta agrees to search for Margaret Devens’s brother who has been missing for 10 days.

Carlotta suspects that the brother is off on a drinking binge. The first indication that this may not be the case is when Miss Devens pays the retainer in hundred-dollar bills, part of a large wad visible in the old lady’s purse. The next is when none of the brother’s cronies seem concerned about his absence. In fact, they seem downright gleeful. When Carlotta visits the Devens home and finds the house has been ransacked and Miss Devens severely injured, she knows this is not a simple bender.

The degree of damage to both Miss Devens and the house make the missing brother a police case. Their involvement in the Devens case gives Carlotta time to check out a drug dealer who is hanging around an elementary school. Add various reports that a stranger is asking questions about her to the plot with the renewal of a long-ago romance and there is a lot to keep straight in this nominee for the Shamus, Anthony, and Edgar awards. It comes together in a surprising but logical ending. There are 11 more books in the series, all well worth a look from any serious student of the private investigator genre.