Belinda Castles

I think Sue Grafton would have to be up there.

So her first book, A, is for Alibi, which her protagonist is Kinsey Mulhoan.

And she was, for me, the first female private investigator, really.

So we'd had the Miss Marple type of investigators, but here for the first time was a woman who was actually a private investigator.

And in that same, I guess, style as Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, she was a loner.

She had two divorces behind her, so a bit of baggage going on.

But she was out there solving the crime or the mystery by herself.

So that was quite a revelation for me when that series first started.

And of course, it went all the way through to Why is for Yesterday, which was in 2017.

So an incredible alphabet series there.

Yes, absolutely.

What a tragedy.

I think Charlotte Jay.

So Charlotte Jay, and particularly the first one of hers, which I read, was Beat Not the Bones.

Charlotte Jay was an Adelaide woman.

Her real name was Geraldine Halls, and she wrote under both names.

But she was writing in the 1950s, and she actually won the first Edgar Allan Poe

Mystery Writers Award in America.

And the following year, Raymond Chandler won.

But wow, an Australian woman from Adelaide won the very first Crime Writers Award.