These writers' sleuths are engaged in an important endeavor. When they came out in the early 1980s, it was at a point of conjunction of feminism when readers were hungry for this kind of role model.

Women mystery writers took a genre that before that had been exclusively male and transformed it. The tradition of the male private eye goes all the way back in literature to the lone man on the edge of society with a moral conscience, saving people's lives. In 1977 Marcia Muller wrote the first female sleuth who was a hard-core professional crime solver.

My passion for that recovery began when I was in grad school. I was assigned to read the women poets that Emily Dickinson read and I was hooked. I began obsessively reading 19th-century novels by women. There was a richness, humor and a detailed portrayal of the plight of women in 19th-century America. It became a cause for me to bring the possibility of teaching these writers at the college level to the forefront.

Detective fiction is an extremely moral genre, dealing with the strongest violation of the moral contract,

It's important for readers, especially girls to read characters that they can relate to and model themselves after: a strong female hero. The Nancy Drew books will be discussed in the program. Then, as girls grow-up, they want a grown-up Nancy Drew. We'll discuss that.

I was incredibly impressed when I saw the movie for the first time,