By chance, I recently checked out from my local library three very different novels, all of which featured smart women who refused to be pushed around.

• In sixteenth-century Ireland:

My Lady Judge     Cora Harrison     (2007)

Mara is a “brehon”—a combination of investigator, prosecutor, judge, and law professor—in the west of Ireland in the sixteenth century, when the ancient Celtic laws have not yet been obliterated by English law. With loving detail, Harrison presents the rocky terrain of the area called the Burren (near Galway) and the complex kinships of the inhabitants. The huge ensemble cast moves through a murder-mystery plot that is full of red herrings and that resembles a modern police procedural. This is the first of the Burren Mystery series, which stretches to 14 books; I plan to read more.

• In 1946 London:

The Unkept Woman     Allison Montclair     (2022) 

As I’ve noted in my review of the first book in this historical mystery series—The Right Sort of Man (2019)—Montclair’s dialogue sparkles and moves her plot along at a brisk pace. Once again with The Unkept Woman, we’re in post-WWII Britain. Two enterprising young women, Iris Sparks and Gwen Bainbridge, run a marriage bureau, but they get themselves involved in murder investigations much more often than they’d like. Iris was a spy for Britain during World War II, and her past associations keep intruding on her postwar job. Gwen is a grieving war widow trying to rebuild a life for herself and her young son. See also my reviews of A Royal Affair (2020) and A Rogue’s Company (2021), and please read these four books in sequence.

• In 1950s and early 1960s California:

Lessons in Chemistry     Bonnie Garmus     (2022) 

In this bitingly satirical page-turner, Garmus re-creates a time period in America when women were expected to be compliant housewives who produced plenty of offspring. The lead character in Lessons in Chemistry, Elizabeth Zott, will have none of it. She’s a brilliant chemist at the (fictitious) Hastings Research Institute, where she’s treated like shit by all her male colleagues save one: Calvin Evans. Calvin is also a brilliant chemist, and the two fall in love. I can’t tell you more of the plot without spoilers, but I can assure you that the incidents of discrimination and harassment that Elizabeth endures are not exaggerated. Garmus deserves all the good reviews she’s received.