Girl Spies Do it Differently

Lucy Wilde in "Despicable Me 2" is having such fun with being a spy that you can’t help warming to her – even when she’s bundling up the tasered hero into the boot of her car and driving off with him. 

 

I’m a big fan of the lady spy or detective in fiction. She rarely relies on weaponry, unless it is, perhaps, a hairclip – or a lipstick taser – preferring to live by her wits. She knows that, being female, she is not always going to be taken seriously, and she uses this to her advantage. She is clever. She is funny. Underestimate her at your peril. Especially if she’s a teenage girl.

 

The first detective I fell in love with was Nancy Drew. From her oh-so desirable convertible, to her strong-minded, good-hearted dad, to her habit of getting herself into trouble, and out of it again, she was irresistible to me as a teen. On screen, I looked up to gorgeous, red-headed Daphne in "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!", but I knew I was really a Velma: more "compact" and less glamorous. Daphne, like the boys, would get the gang into danger, but it was often Velma who’d get them out of it, using nothing more high-tech than her geeky brain.  

 

Having said that, I must admit I was a fan of the original Charlie’s Angels, too. Three sassy women, with martial arts training and the BEST HAIR in the WORLD, they proved that girls don’t have to look and act like boys to be effective. And that friendship between women is just as important as friendship between women and men. 

 

Nowadays, Cammie from the "Gallagher Girls" by Ally Carter is the girl we all want to be. She goes to an American academy where "they teach you things like advanced encryption and fourteen different languages" and although you don’t have to become a spy afterwards, it’s kind of obvious what you’re being trained for. Holidays tend to be for top-secret missions and makeup lessons are purely for the purposes of becoming a master of disguise. No wonder Cammie enjoys her schooldays more than a typical teen.

 

America has produced its fair share of great fictional female spies and detectives, righting wrongs and making the world a better place. (What about VI Warshawski, I hear you cry, or Maddie in Moonlighting, or Kay Scarpetta? I know.) But they exist the world over. Of course there’s the quintessentially English Miss Marple, but equally, who could resist the Botswana-based Mama Ramotswe, Alexander McCall Smith’s "traditionally built" owner of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency?

 

One of my all-time great heroines is Violette Szabo, the SOE agent captured in France by the Gestapo, whose life story was told in Carve Her Name With Pride. You’ll find some of her spirit in Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein, featuring a female pilot and an SOE agent outwitting the Nazis in a nail-biting tale of courage under torture. It perfectly captures the mix of mental toughness and physical vulnerability that is the hallmark of the female spy.

 

My new heroine, Peta Jones, has something of Velma’s knack for puzzle solving. And like the girls in Code Name Verity, she discovers an endless reserve of bravery when she’s faced with extreme danger. She doesn’t have a lipstick taser, but she does have one classic key advantage: she’s a seriously under-estimated teenage girl. And as her great fictional predecessors have have shown, that’s an excellent place to start.