In 2012’s Best Mysteries, Mean Girls Rule

VPM | By Maureen Corrigan

Published December 19, 2012 at 12:00 PM EST

Updated January 19, 2024

In 2012’s Best Mysteries, Mean Girls Rule

Mean girls and their ingenious female creators top my mysteries and thrillers list this year. Maybe it takes the special discernment of a female writer (who’s presumably suffered through the “Queen Bee and Wannabee” cliques of middle school) to really capture the cruel mental machinations that can hide behind a pair of shining eyes and a lip-glossed smile.

It’s ironic to recall that American pulp detectives used to dismissively refer to women as “frails.” Those tough guys wouldn’t dare use that term about the women in — or authors of — some of these books. They’d be garroted with their very own Y chromosomes faster than you can say “Nancy Drew.”

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Maureen Corrigan

Maureen Corrigan, book critic for NPR's Fresh Air, is The Nicky and Jamie Grant Distinguished Professor of the Practice in Literary Criticism at Georgetown University. She is an associate editor of and contributor to Mystery and Suspense Writers (Scribner) and the winner of the 1999 Edgar Award for Criticism, presented by the Mystery Writers of America. In 2019, Corrigan was awarded the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing by the National Book Critics Circle.

Corrigan served as a juror for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Her book So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came To Be and Why It Endures was published by Little, Brown in September 2014. Corrigan is represented by Trinity Ray at The Tuesday Lecture Agency: [email protected]

Corrigan's literary memoir, Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading! was published in 2005. Corrigan is also a reviewer and columnist for The Washington Post's Book World. In addition to serving on the advisory panel of The American Heritage Dictionary, she has chaired the Mystery and Suspense judges' panel of the Los Angeles TimesBook Prize.

See stories by Maureen Corrigan