Gender Swap: Three Thriller Titans Transition to Female Protagonists
by Bonnie Kistler
Michael Connelly, John Sandford, and Scott Turow are giants in the mystery/suspense/thriller world. They’ve produced bestseller after bestseller over careers spanning more than three decades. I’ve been a loyal reader of all three from the beginning, and their novels are what the book bloggers call an “auto-buy” for me. Turow in particular has been a major influence on my own writing. (Upon learning that I’m a lawyer/novelist, people often ask, “Oh, like Grisham?” And I always reply, “No, like Turow.”)
So I was struck when these three novelists benched their long-running, much-loved and/or admired protagonists—all white males of advancing years—to introduce new lead characters who are considerably younger and—wait for it—female!
John Sandford is best known as the author of the long-running Prey series starring Lucas Davenport, a Minnesota detective lately turned U.S. Marshal. First introduced in 1989, Lucas is independently wealthy, loves fine clothes, fast cars, and hunting down criminals. An erstwhile ladies’ man, he’s now married with a family. Although his age is never specified, he has adult children and is clearly on the downhill slope of middle age.
Michael Connelly’s most famous series character is Harry Bosch, an LAPD detective now retired and working freelance. Bosch arrived on the scene in 1992, a gruff Vietnam vet with a dark soul and a past full of trauma. He doesn’t have Lucas Davenport’s joie de vivre; Bosch is on a mission to eradicate evil wherever he finds it. Connelly is precise about Bosch’s age: he was born in 1950.
Scott Turow’s novels aren’t series per se, but he does write recurring characters, most prominently Rusty Sabich and Sandy Stern, who first appeared in 1987 in the ground-breaking novel, Presumed Innocent. Sabich is a lawyer turned judge with an unfortunate penchant for extramarital affairs that always end in death. Stern, also a lawyer, is an old-world gentleman, courtly and brilliant. He’s retired now and residing in an assisted living community.
Photo by Nicole McConville (www.nicolemcconville.com)
And now there are three new sheriffs in town—or at least, three new lead characters, each a young woman. From Michael Connelly comes Renee Ballard, a detective with the LAPD. From John Sandford, Letty Davenport, an investigator on loan to the Department of Homeland Security. And from Scott Turow, Clarice “Pinky” Granum, a private investigator working for a lawyer.
This marks a sea change in the thriller world. Imagine if Sue Grafton had suddenly introduced private eye Kenny Malone at the tail end of the alphabet. What could have prompted these authors to embrace their female sides at this point in their careers?
One explanation might lie in the demographics of fiction readers. Estimates vary, but it’s undeniable that the majority of novels are purchased and read by women. A cynic might speculate that these mega-selling authors hoped to expand their readership to include more women, and younger women in particular. Or consider the fact that each of these gentlemen now belongs to the Medicare generation; writing a different kind of protagonist could recharge their authorial batteries.
That was Michael Connelly’s answer when the question was put to him. He was the first of the three to introduce a female protagonist, and when asked why, he said he simply wanted a change. Renee Ballard first appeared in The Late Show in 2017. Like Harry Bosch, she’s an LAPD detective. Also like Bosch, she’s a loner with a tragic past, a rogue who flouts authority and breaks rules and routinely antagonizes her colleagues. She’s much like a younger, female version of Harry Bosch, which makes me wonder how much of a change this was for Connelly. Indeed, he admits that he never worries about getting into the female mind when writing Ballard. He doesn’t ask himself What would a woman do here? His only consideration is What would a solid detective do? In other words, whatever Bosch would have done is probably what Ballard will do.
John Sandford first introduced Letty Davenport in Naked Prey, though not as a lead character. She was a wild child living in rural poverty when Lucas Davenport encountered her in the course of one of his cases. She showed grit and mad survival skills, and he was so taken with her that he adopted her. She recurs as a background character in many of the subsequent Prey books, but she emerged as a series protagonist in The Investigator in 2022, followed in 2023 by Dark Angel. Letty is a Stanford grad with a master’s degree in economics, and she’s both tough and brilliant. Also, she’s a serious gun nut. She’s terrific at outthinking the bad guys and also at outshooting them. Why, she seems a whole lot like her dad!
Pinky Granum is more of a departure for Scott Turow. He first introduced her as a supporting character in The Last Trial before giving her a book of her own in Suspect in 2022. She’s Sandy Stern’s granddaughter and worked as his paralegal after being kicked out of the police academy for failing a drug test. She has pink hair and tattoos and sports jewelry that looks like a nail through her nose. She’s also bisexual and falls somewhere on the autism spectrum. In short, she’s nothing like her grandfather or Rusty Sabich. But she’s an astute observer with razor-sharp investigative skills that fuel an exhilarating plot in Suspect. In Pinky, Turow has created a startlingly original character, and he delves deep into her mind, even employing a first-person narrative voice. If he’s pandering to a younger, female readership, he’s doing so brilliantly.
Whatever motivated these stellar authors to transition to young, female protagonists, the result is refreshing. It was once true that the only female characters to be found in the pages of crime fiction were femme fatales, virginal victims, or spinster sleuths. Now with Renee Ballard, Letty Davenport, and Pinky Granum, we can enjoy female characters who are subjects not objects, who act rather than be acted upon, and who are tough and smart and good with a gun. Hats off to Michael Connelly, John Sandford, and Scott Turow for thrilling us with something new.
Bonnie Kistler is a former Philadelphia trial lawyer. Born and raised in the horse country of Pennsylvania, she attended Bryn Mawr College, where she graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in English literature, and she received her law degree from the University of the Pennsylvania Law School, where she was a moot court champion and legal writing instructor. She and her husband now live in Florida and the mountains of western North Carolina. They have two daughters. Her new novel is HER, TOO (7/4/2023) from Harper Paperbacks. Her novel, The Cage, was published by Harper in 2022. For more on Bonnie, visit: https://bonniekistler.com/