Liza Cody

  • Born: April 11, 1944
  • Place of Birth: London, England

TYPES OF PLOT: Private investigator; amateur sleuth

PRINCIPAL SERIES: Anna Lee, 1980-; Eva Wylie, 1992-; Lady Bag Books, 2013-

Contribution

Award-winning author Liza Cody is recognized for broadening the scope of the British detective genre. Not content merely with incorporating a modern female detective into the mold, she has created works that complicate what it means to be a detecting woman in a field traditionally reserved for tough male protagonists and spinsterish female amateurs. Identified primarily with her two feminist detective series, featuring Anna Lee and Eva Wylie, Cody also writes short fiction and novels of suspense.

Certain features of Cody’s style resemble those of master detective writer Raymond Chandler. Her prose is realistic and sparse, replete with believable and frequently witty dialogue. Like Chandler’s characters, Cody’s detectives are loners wary of connections with others but in search of them nonetheless. The world they investigate is dark, in which human nature is deceptive, and the task of piecing together clues is labyrinthine.

Cody is notable for her development of original female detectives, both professional and amateur, and for her examination of the intersection of gender, authority, and justice in her works. Like her contemporaries, American authors and , Cody populates her novels with sleuthing women who are tough-minded, physically strong, independent in lifestyle, and otherwise defiant of sexual stereotypes.

Cody also wrote The Lady Bag Books, a two-book series that provides a first-person perspective of an unhoused woman living in LondonLady Bag (2013) and Crocodiles and Good Intentions: Further Adventures of Lady Bag (2018). In addition to her successful novel series, Cody published several stand-alone novels, including Ballad of a Dead Nobody (2011), Miss Terry (2012), Gift or Theft (2020), and The Short-Order Detective (2024), as well as several short story collections, including My People and Other Crime Stories (2020).

Biography

Born Liza Nassim on April 11, 1944, Liza Cody spent her childhood in London. Attracted to the visual and graphic arts, she studied at the London Art School and later at the Royal Academy School of Art, where she excelled at painting and design. Cody’s training and abilities led her to a position at Madame Tussauds wax museum in London, where she worked as a studio technician. An interesting milieu for a future crime fiction writer, Tussauds houses some grim likenesses of notorious London killers, including Jack the Ripper. Cody found additional employment as a graphic designer and painter, but it was not in the art world that she would leave her mark on British popular culture. On the successful publication of her first novel, Dupe (1980), Cody focused her energies full-time on writing.

Cody would pen additional novels featuring Anna Lee, including Bad Company (1982), Stalker (1984), Head Case (1985), Under Contract (1986), and Backhand (1991). The popularity of Anna Lee led to a successful British television series based on Cody’s novels produced by London Weekend Television (LWT) Productions. Later, Arts & Entertainment (A&E) aired the five episodes on American television. Purportedly, Cody’s dissatisfaction with the medium’s interpretation of her chief character, Anna Lee, led the author to begin a new series with a different female lead, professional wrestler Eva Wylie.

Cody dedicated the 1990s to developing her series of novels featuring Eva Wylie. The appearance of Bucket Nut (1992) is a dividing mark in Cody’s oeuvre. Instead of featuring an upwardly mobile professional sleuth, like Anna Lee, at the helm of the investigation, the Eva Wylie series focuses on an amateur sleuth from a lower sphere of society, one who circulates among the most desperate of human beings, frequently social outcasts with nothing to lose. Monkey Wrench (1994) and Musclebound (1997) soon followed. Although her characters and their circumstances were descending, Cody’s reputation as a writer rose into the ranks of Britain’s most respected modern detective fiction writers.

Cody achieved recognition as a writer of short fiction as well. Widely anthologized in mystery and detective collections, she has published independent collections of short stories, including Murder and Company (1988) and The Lucky Dip, and Other Stories (2003). In addition to her ongoing work as an author, she has edited volumes of detective fiction, assisting Michael Lewin with the numerically designated Culprit series. The inaugural volume, First Culprit: An Annual of Crime Stories appeared in 1992 to great acclaim.

Analysis

Although Liza Cody’s characters cross literary boundaries in terms of gender expectations, scholars are split on their response to the author’s female detectives and their placement in the genre. Some critics believe that Cody’s women, in addition to defying traditional depictions of female sleuths, break with stereotypes of the literary detective in general, truly transforming the genre. Others insist that Cody’s protagonists, Anna Lee and Eva Wylie, are essentially male private eyes in drag. Many critics have noted resemblances between Cody’s British Anna Lee and her American counterparts, Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone and Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski, primarily their independent natures. Eva Wylie, however, appears to have no equal in the field of feminist detective fiction.

In the Anna Lee series, the title character finds herself solving crimes and battling workplace politics. Lee’s boss, Commander Martin Brierly (a thorn in Lee’s side), and his office manager, Beryl Doyle (as old-fashioned and traditional as the doily that her name suggests), are committed to upholding the patriarchal hierarchy of their small investigative firm, one that puts Lee on the bottom rung. Her boss assigns her only minor cases, which typically balloon into significant and difficult investigations. Over the years, her successes garnered Lee a private office and the begrudging respect of her employer. Still, the final novel of the series, Backhand (1991), concludes with Lee in a homeless and jobless state, less secure than in her inaugural appearance in Dupe.

In many respects, Anna Lee is a woman in a man’s world, capable of doing the job but slowed by social roadblocks she must circumvent. As a female detective, Lee breaks new ground in urban, rural, and foreign environs (subsequent novels take her out of London to the English countryside, on tour with a rock star, and across the ocean to Florida), but her progress is impeded by entrenched attitudes of male privilege. In Cody’s novels, Lee’s grit and intellect are often insufficient tools to forge gender equality where it is not wanted: the male-dominant enclave of a private detective agency. Ironically, Lee’s status as a marginalized player at Brierly’s allows her to see events with enhanced clarity and to pursue cases with greater freedom. She finds herself on the same fringes of society where the criminals she seeks take refuge. Self-reliant in the extreme (she has trust issues), alienated from her family (out of touch with her respectable middle-class sisters), and underappreciated by colleagues (who find both her gender and her methods suspect), Lee finds companionship with her neighbors, Bea and Selwyn, and in short-lived sexual encounters with men who come into and go out of her life with increasing frequency.

The Lee series can be read as a fictional chronicle of a working woman’s slow but steady progress in the investigative field during the 1980s. In contrast, Cody’s 1990’s series featuring Eva Wylie (the wily Eve) further disrupts traditions associated with women protagonists in British detective fiction. Anna Lee might be a distant relative of mystery great Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, but Wylie does not descend from the same family tree. A wrestler by avocation and a part-time security guard by financial necessity, Wylie’s forays into detection are the product of dire circumstances, not professional calling. Her moniker on the wrestling circuit is the “London Lassassin,” and her bulk, street smarts, and reputation for toughness equip her to navigate, if not negotiate, the murky regions of the city’s underside. Like Lee, Wylie is beyond the pale but at a greater distance. By her gender, class, and occupation (and occasional lack thereof), Wylie is thrice removed from mainstream detective fiction and its traditions.

Dupe

Critics have dubbed Anna Lee Britain’s first feminist private eye. Her debut in Dupe finds Lee, a former police officer, joining a private detective firm, Brierly Security. Her first case involves the suspicious death of a black sheep socialite, Deirdre Jackson. When the young woman’s parents doubt the accidental nature of their daughter’s car wreck, Lee investigates, discovering in the process evidence of wrongdoing and a cover-up. Further complicating her investigation are the barriers Lee faces in the workplace. Her patriarchal boss, Martin Brierly, objects to women detectives in general, and Lee in particular. He seems intent on proving her incompetence despite her progress in the investigation.

In 1980, Dupe received the British Crime Writers’ Association’s John Creasey Memorial Award and was nominated for the Edgar Award in the same calendar year. Critics responded positively to the lead character’s unique personality, part steely-eyed detective and part sympathetic human. Anna Lee is a woman who possesses the rational acumen to re-create a crime scene and track events back to the killer. Equally, her ability to sympathize with the victim’s family, if not perhaps the deceased (whose disagreeable reputation in life follows her to her grave), spurs Lee’s dedication to the case. The heroine’s blend of overt intelligence and covert compassion appealed so to readers that Cody featured her in five additional novels. Lee even makes cameo appearances in the Eva Wylie novels. Ironically, in these works, Lee, now in charge of her agency, is perceived by Wylie as a suspicious outsider. When Lee attempts to hire Wylie on one occasion and thus legitimize the underdog’s status, the wrestler rejects her offer.

Dupe was the first of the Anna Lee series, followed by Bad Company (1982), Stalker (1983), Head Case (1985), Under Contract (1986), and Backhand (1991).

Bucket Nut

Approaching the marginalization of women from a different vantage point, Bucket Nut (1992) introduces Eva Wylie, a professional wrestler and amateur sleuth. Because Wylie is a member of the underclass, her identification is with the criminals and those labeled miscreants by society. Law enforcement officials are the “others,” those not to be believed. Cody provides sufficient background information on Wylie to explain her deep-rooted suspicion of authority and her solidarity with the downtrodden. Abandoned by her drunken mother, Wylie was reared in a series of abusive foster homes. Trust issues are second nature to the adult Wylie, and her wariness is her amulet against harm in the first installment of the series.

In the process of resolving a case involving extortion, drug running, and a missing person, Wylie commits a few criminal acts herself, including the heist of a vehicle and a wallet. Because her neighborhood is populated by Mafia men, drug dealers, and a jazz club singer with connections to both, Wylie’s interactions with ne’er-do-wells are frequent, and her avoidance of law enforcement is all too necessary. Critics raved about this new female antidetective. Loud, crude, in-your-face Wylie is not necessarily likable but unforgettable. The novel merited the prestigious Crime Writers’ Association’s Silver Dagger Award for 1992.

Bucket Nut was the first of the Eva Wylie series, followed by Monkey Wrench (1994) and Musclebound (1997).

The seventeen entries in Lucky Dip, and Other Stories (2003) feature an assortment of women in dire predicaments, most of whom survive their ordeals and live to tell their tales. Although many of the stories appeared in previous anthologies, two are new to the volume, and two, “Doing It Under the Table” and “Chalk Mother,” were originally radio dramas broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation. The title story, “Lucky Dip,” which received an Anthony for best short story in 1993, features an abandoned urchin navigating life on the backstreets of London. In stark contrast to the title story, the stories “Where’s Stacy?” and “A Card or a Kitten” are quirky, lighthearted tales reflective of the arena in which they occur, Florida. Readers who prefer darker mysteries will be pleased with the remainder of the entries, set in Cody’s trademark murky environs of London.

Principal Series Characters:

  • Anna Lee, a former police officer turned private investigator, is employed by Brierly Security in London, where she is the lone female detective in a sea of circling male sleuths. In her quest to solve crimes, Lee is a capable and determined young woman, but she finds herself impeded by workplace and societal gender barriers. Estranged from her family and unable to form long-term attachments to men, Lee finds solace in her friendship with her downstairs neighbors.
  • Bea and Selwyn, Lee's neighbors who rent the unit below hers. The couple, a long-suffering wife and her poet-husband act as an emotional counterpoint to the private detective’s tough-skinned rational demeanor. Often, they elicit Lee’s aid and even her sympathies.
  • Martin Brierly is Lee’s boss, an egoist who second-guesses her competence for the job despite her obvious contributions to the firm.
  • Eva Wylie supports herself through various odd jobs, including bouncer, scrapyard security guard, and amateur sleuth. Wylie wrestles professionally under the moniker “the London Lassassin.” Although streetwise, Wylie lacks social grace and mental quickness. Not as tough as her large bulk and gruff demeanor suggest, she is emotionally more fragile than Lee.

Bibliography

"Bio/Biblio." Liza Cody, www.lizacody.com/bio.htm. Accessed 20 July 2024.

Breen, Jon. Review of The Lucky Dip, and Other Stories, by Liza Cody. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, July 2004.

Hadley, Mary. British Women Mystery Writers: Six Authors of Detective Fiction with Female Sleuths. McFarland, 2002.

Irons, Glenwood, and Joan Worthing Roberts. “From Spinster to Hipster: The Suitability of Miss Marple and Anna Lee.” In Feminism in Women’s Detective Fiction, edited by Glenwood Irons. University of Toronto Press, 1995.

Klein, Kathleen Gregory. The Woman Detective: Gender and Genre. University of Illinois Press, 1988.

Klein, Kathleen Gregory, editor. Great Women Mystery Writers: Classic to Contemporary. Greenwood Press, 1994.

Publishers Weekly. Review of Monkey Wrench, by Liza Cody, vol. 242, no. 15, Apr. 1995, p. 57.

Zvirin, Stephanie. Review of Musclebound, by Liza Cody. Booklist, vol. 93, no. 22, Aug. 1997, p. 1882.