Sarah Dunant

• Born: August 8, 1950
• Place of Birth: London, England

TYPES OF PLOT: Private investigator; thriller; psychological

PRINCIPAL SERIES: Hannah Wolfe, 1991-1995

Contribution

Sarah Dunant has created a realistic female private investigator in Hannah Wolfe, adding a feminist slant to the detective-fiction genre. She has added psychological and issue-oriented elements to the genre without sacrificing the necessary strengths of plot and action. Her later novels Transgressions (1997) and Mapping the Edge (1999) stretch the boundaries of the psychological thriller genre, developing themes of women who refuse to become victims and exploring the relationship between sexuality, fear, and control. Her style is intelligent and literary, blurring the lines between detective fiction, psychological thriller, and literary fiction. Dunant’s work bridges the gap between commercial fiction and the literary novel. Hannah Wolfe’s self-conscious commentary is reminiscent of postmodernism, while both Transgressions and Mapping the Edge maintain complex parallel plots that are experimental in form. The first Hannah Wolfe mystery, Birth Marks (1991), was shortlisted for Britain’s prestigious Gold Dagger Award. Fatlands (1994), the second Wolfe mystery, won the Silver Dagger Award.

Biography

Sarah Dunant was born on August 8, 1950, in London. She earned a degree in history from Newnham College, Cambridge University, in 1972 and began working as a producer for British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Radio in 1974. She became a successful broadcaster, critic, and writer, well-known to British audiences as a presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, BBC Television’s The Late Show, a nightly cultural news program, and BBC Radio 3’s Nightwaves.

Dunant wrote her first two novels, the thrillers Exterminating Angels (1983) and Intensive Care (1986), with Peter Busby under the joint pseudonym Peter Dunant. The first novel Dunant published under her own name, Snow Storms in a Hot Climate (1988), is a psychological thriller with a complex web of psychology, eroticism, humor, twisting plot, and intelligent writing that foreshadows the elements of her later mysteries.

Dunant then wrote three mysteries in the Hannah Wolfe series. Her objective was to create a realistic modern female detective who would be clever yet vulnerable. Set in London, Birth Marks introduces Hannah Wolfe, a working-class young woman who works for a security firm. She takes a job tracking down a missing ballet dancer, and an unexpectedly complex tale of action and ideas unfolds. Fatlands, perhaps the most compelling Wolfe mystery, followed in 1994. Further revelations about Hannah’s philosophy of life are intertwined in a novel that manages to be frightening, violent, and witty at the same time and leaves the reader thinking about contemporary issues and feminist lifestyles. The third novel in the series, Under My Skin (1995), is set in the milieu of an upscale women’s spa and features the murder of a prominent plastic surgeon. Once again, action and feminist issues are intertwined with the engaging character of Hannah.

Dunant edited two nonfiction collections, The War of the Words: The Political Correctness Debate (1995) and The Age of Anxiety (1996), continuing her successful double career as a writer and broadcaster. Two nonseries psychological thrillers followed Transgressions and Mapping the Edge. Both books are complex, stretching the boundaries of form as well as what is traditional and permissible behavior for a woman. She was criticized by feminists for the controversial rape scene in Transgressions, in which the heroine deflects the potential violence of her attacker by seducing him.

In 2000, Dunant bought an apartment in Florence, Italy, and turned to historical fiction. The Birth of Venus (2003), set in fifteenth-century Florence, is the story of an intelligent young woman, Alessandra Cecchi, who longs to be a painter. She makes a marriage of convenience with an older man who turns out to be a homosexual but who allows her to paint. She becomes the lover of her young painting teacher, and then her world explodes with the rise of the fiery fundamentalist monk Savonarola. In this novel, Dunant combines her background in history and art with her insights into female sexuality. The book was highly successful, becoming a best seller.

Following The Birth of Venus, Dunant gave up her work for the BBC to devote more time to her two teenage daughters, Zoe and Georgia, and her writing. A second historical novel, In the Company of the Courtesan (2006), is set in Venice and recounts the adventures of a beautiful courtesan who becomes the model for Titian’s “Venus of Urbino,” narrated by the heroine’s servant, an individual of short stature. Dunant published another standalone novel, Sacred Hearts, in 2009, which made the shortlist for the 2010 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction. In 2013, she began her Borgias series with Blood and Beauty (2013) and In the Name of the Family (2017). In the Name of the Family became a Times of London Best Book of the Year in 2018.

Analysis

Sarah Dunant writes sharp and witty, complex literary mysteries. Her heroines are contemporary women who are realistic and candid. Her novels incorporate a subtext of challenging women’s traditional roles, especially regarding sexuality. These women take charge of their destinies and value independence over security. Even when they become victims of violence, they struggle for control. They are vulnerable yet credible. However, character and contemporary issues are always subordinate to plot and action. The story keeps moving through unexpected twists and turns right up to the last page; there are no easy answers or unsatisfactory endings in Dunant’s novels.

Birth Marks

Birth Marks, the first Hannah Wolfe mystery, is a novel of psychology as well as a traditional detective novel. This novel introduces Hannah Wolfe, a single security investigator in her thirties. Hannah’s assignments are generally less-than-glamorous jobs such as providing security to rich women on shopping jaunts or department store surveillance. As the novel opens, Hannah takes a missing person assignment: A young ballet dancer has fallen out of touch with her elderly teacher/guardian.

Set in London, the tale is told in the first person. Hannah comments with humor and irony on her business, the people around her, and her own life. She is tough but idealistic. Her commentary pays homage to Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled style with nods to Agatha Christie. She speaks directly to the reader in a wryly self-conscious style.

When the eight-month-pregnant dancer is found drowned in the Thames, an apparent suicide, the police consider the case closed. However, Hannah is both persistent and insightful. Considering her biological clock, she understands that an eight-month pregnant woman is likely to be looking toward new life, not death. Intelligence and observation, the detective’s tools of the trade, contribute to her suspicion that the suicide note was not in the dancer’s apartment when Hannah was snooping there shortly before the death was discovered. Hannah digs deeper, tracks the dancer to Paris, and the tale becomes one of artificial insemination and surrogate motherhood. The dancer had been recruited to bear a child for a rich and childless war hero and had been leading a double life.

The ending has a twist. It is not what it first appears to be, revealing modern life's moral ambiguity and complexity. Hannah reveals an intelligence, attitude, humor, and self-knowledge that makes readers eager to read more about her. The book combines character, setting, psychology, voice, and contemporary issues with a solid plot and action.

Fatlands

The second Hannah Wolfe mystery, Fatlands, lives up to the promise of the first. Hannah has taken a job shepherding a spoiled, rich fourteen-year-old on a shopping trip in London. While the young girl is in her charge, she is blown up in a car explosion presumably meant for her father, a research scientist who has received death threats from animal rights activists. Stunned, grieving, and feeling responsible, Hannah unravels an increasingly complex and compelling plot that navigates through factory farming, international corporate politics, and the deadly potential of chemicals in people’s food.

Fatlands is a notable page-turner for its central scene of violence to Hannah and the aftermath of that violence. Viciously beaten by her unknown antagonist in a dark country lane, Hannah ends up in the hospital. Through her brutally honest first-person narration, the attack is seen and felt through Hannah’s own eyes. She continues her investigation, emotionally scarred but determined to find and confront her attacker. In the thrilling ending, she comes face to face with her attacker and faces not only her fear but also the motivation for violence against women. In Fatlands, Dunant introduces the relationship between sex and violence, pain and fear, and the refusal of a woman to become a victim that would be further developed in the later novel Transgressions.

Fatlands was a popular and critical success. Critics and the public praised the book for its intelligence and style, observation and wit, feminist perspective, and use of ideas, all pleasingly subordinate to its action and plot.

Under My Skin

Hannah Wolfe returns in Under My Skin, the third mystery in the series. As the new plot unfolds, the reader is made aware that Hannah suffers from post-traumatic shock syndrome as a result of the severe beating she received in Fatlands. She bears a physical scar on her face in addition to the emotional scars, so it is ironic that her new case is set at a health and beauty spa outside London, among women who will do almost anything to be as perfectly beautiful as possible.

As in all of the Hannah Wolfe mysteries, a straightforward case with a relatively easy solution, sabotage at the upscale health spa, evolves into something more challenging: the murder of the plastic surgeon husband of the spa’s beautiful, surgically altered owner. As Hannah investigates, interviewing a number of his unsatisfied clients, witty and ironic commentary on the contemporary fascination with youth and beauty abounds. At the same time, Hannah is informally investigating the seeming infidelity of her sister’s husband, of whom Hannah has never been fond. Once again, the obvious and easy conclusions are not the end of the story, and the twists and turns of the plot’s ending are ultimately both surprising and satisfying.

Dunant succeeds in creating another novel that combines ideas about contemporary life and relationships, a solid page-turning detective story, and insights about men and women with a deeper exploration of the character of Hannah Wolfe. This is an entertaining book, that is compelling for those readers who are by now hooked on Hannah’s life and work, but it does not reach the depth of complexity and psychological insight of Fatlands.

Transgressions

Transgressions, a nonseries psychological thriller, is Dunant’s most controversial novel. Elizabeth “Lizzie” Skorvecky, recently separated from her boyfriend of several years, lives alone in a rambling house on the outskirts of London. She has isolated herself from her friends while she translates a steamy, almost pornographic, Czech detective novel into English. When strange things begin to happen in her house, she first suspects her former boyfriend, then poltergeists but finally realizes that she is being stalked by a potential rapist, possibly even a serial killer.

The central and most controversial scene of the thriller is the rape scene. When Lizzie finds the stalker in her bedroom, she overcomes her fear and refuses to become a victim. Desperately hoping to defuse the violence and save her life, she takes control and seduces her rapist. Dunant wrote the scene graphically from both the erotic and psychological viewpoints and received some scathing criticism from feminists and critics as a result.

The form of the book is literary and complex: As the two stories unfold, the story of what is happening to Lizzie and the story that she is translating begin to merge. When Lizzie realizes that her stalker has been reading the erotic drafts of her translation, taking them from her curbside trash bins, she begins to write for him, creating a third level of narrative. Rather than give in to her fear, she begins to orchestrate the climax of the plot. Determined to trap him, she calls him to return by writing vivid and arousing scenes. Suspense and tension build. Again, Dunant’s ending does not disappoint.

In this novel, Dunant stretches the boundaries of what is permissible in a rape scene. She creates a heroine who refuses to become a victim at the same time that she fears she is losing her grip on reality. She explores the complex relationship between sexual obsession, violence, power, and fear, and she creates a compelling psychological thriller that keeps the reader engrossed until the last page.

Mapping the Edge

Once again, Dunant stretches the boundaries of form and genre in her novel of suspense, Mapping the Edge. Anna, an investigative journalist and single mother living in London, leaves her beloved young daughter with trusted friends and departs for a brief vacation in Florence. When she does not return as planned, her friends have to face the possibility that she is not coming back. Missing, but why? Abducted? Murdered? Lingering with a lover? Dunant interweaves two parallel possible scenarios, Anna kidnapped by a stranger, or Anna involved in a romantic interlude that becomes increasingly sinister, with the story of the tension among those who wait at home, narrated by Anna’s best friend, Estella. Estella, trying to solve the mystery of what has become of Anna and speaking in the first person, is somewhat reminiscent of Hannah Wolfe in tone, intelligence, and attitude.

Anna, in either scenario, needs to rise above the role of passive victim or lover to take control of the situation and return to her daughter. Both possible scenarios are fraught with suspense. In one, she must escape her kidnapper by cooperating enough to determine his motives and weaknesses. In the other, as she gradually realizes that her lover is a scam artist, she must unravel his motives and secrets to foil his plan to use her in his art smuggling scheme.

Familiar Dunant elements of intelligent, independent women, psychological thriller, suspense, and a victim who overcomes her fear to take charge of her fate, along with commentary on contemporary sexuality, lifestyle, and relationships, and a plot that keeps the reader turning the pages late into the night create another satisfying and unsettling novel. It is never revealed which is the true reason for Anna’s disappearance, as she grapples with the conflict between motherhood and duty and the desire to return to a freer, less restricted life.

Principal Series Character:

• Hannah Wolfe is a private detective, the sole employee of Frank Comfort, a hard-boiled former police officer, and owner of Comfort and Security, a private security firm. Hannah is tough and independent, yet real and vulnerable. Her straightforward security jobs, such as shepherding a rich teenager on a shopping expedition in London, tend to turn into more complex investigations because of her intelligence and feisty persistence. Hannah has a wry sense of humor, often turned on herself, and is unlucky in love.

Bibliography

Dunant, Sarah. “The Female Eye: An Interview with Sarah Dunant.” Interview by David Stuart Davies. Armchair Detective 27, no. 4 (Fall, 1994): 419-421.

Dunant, Sarah. “Rewriting the Detectives.” The Guardian, June 29, 1993, p. 228.

Flood, Alison. "Booker Rivals Clash Again on Walter Scott Prize Shortlist." Guardian, 2010, www.theguardian.com/books/2010/apr/01/booker-rivals-walter-scott-prize-shortlist. Accessed 10 Aug. 2024.

Horeck, Tanya. “’More Intimate than Violence’: Sexual Violation in Sarah Dunant’s Transgressions.” Women: A Cultural Review 11, no. 3 (Winter, 2000): 262-272.

Johnson, Tracy. “The Fear Industry: Women, Gothic and Contemporary Crime Narrative.” Gothic Studies 4, no. 1 (2002): 44-62.

Neustatter, Angela. “Women: Fear and Loathing.” The Guardian, May 27, 1997, p. T008.

Steinberg, Sybil. “Sarah Dunant: Fate and Fiction in Florence.” Publishers Weekly 251, no. 10 (March 8, 2004): 43-44.

Zimmerman, Jean. "'In The Name Of The Family' Probes The Lives Of An Infamous Clan." NPR, 4 Mar. 2017, www.npr.org/2017/03/04/515438391/in-the-name-of-the-family-probes-the-lives-of-an-infamous-clan. Accessed 10 Aug. 2024.