I went shopping earlier this year for mystery novels narrated from the perspective of a modern, female character. I read in the NYT about this Elizabeth Hand book, which won a notable award, and seemed a likely starter for what I was looking for. I have been long accustomed to the hardboiled accounts from male-centric crime and detective novels by old craftsmen like Chandler, Hammett, MacDonald; and newer ones like Lindsey, Markson, and James Lee Burke, etc. In the aughts, I read two of those amazingly engaging “Girl With ___” novels by Stieg Larsson. When he died, I quit reading mysteries altogether and went back to my usual fare of snobby supposedly literary novels, of which half were remarkable and the other half mostly NYC publisher hype. No wonder I retreated to older tried and true novels.

In this novel, Hand’s heroine is Cass Neary. Cass is not a detective but is reckless and ends up being one. Like Larsson’s first “Tattoo” novel, we follow Neary and root for her. The pages fly by. The rugged coastal Maine setting and cast of characters are intriguing. We are there and feel it. It’s, as they say in CW 101, atmospheric. Of course it doesn’t last, this lyrical writing, because the sellers of mystery/crime books demand storylines explode with ghastly appeal to the most jaded of book readers.

Cass wanders off with the curiosity of a typical Gothic heroine and finds out more than she bargained for, reaching shore on the bad guy’s property on an even more remote island than the bleak, subsistance-level one she had been staying on. Oddly, in a bit of dubious editing, the bad guy’s place is somehow like a self-sufficient Four Seasons Resort, complete with a Chamber of Horrors. It reminded me that Larsson’s first book went off the tracks in a similar way, with a far-fetched B&D dungeon and torture basement making us erase all our nicer memories of fast-lane life in cool Sweden.

Cass Neary is much like Claire DeWitt in Sara Gran’s series (to be posted soon) that also features a lovable punk, down & out, beer-swilling, pill-taking tough-ass grrrl renunciant who gets knocked around to hell and back but still keeps going in order to find the truth and prove a point.

The ghost and soul of the crime/detective genre’s most unforgettable woman character — Lisbeth Salander — remains as Influencer.

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