Women and the Mystery Genre - Interview with Janice Rossen

This long-ago interview was aired on KUT Austin (the University of Texas at Austin local radio broadcast)--in fact, so far back in the mists of time that we do not even know the exact date it was recorded (c. 1990s). The tape itself was rescued from oblivion by Patricia Hammond, and restored by Alessandro Romano.
Janice Rossen has written several academic books, all of which reflect her passion for reading. This interview discusses the subject of detective fiction, particularly in relation to gender roles. Can a woman character act as a hard-boiled detective in the same way as Chandler's Philip Marlowe? It also considers the influence of psychoanalysis as an emerging cultural influence in the early part of the 20th century. Dorothy L. Sayers' Gaudy Night (1935) describes in fictional form the anxiety of female Oxford dons, troubled by the malign activities of a poison pen: is the perpetrator a member of the college? (Oxford women reading it at the time hated the novel.) It is also a romance, seeking to bring the hero and heroine onto an equal footing.
Zeitgeist is all, in detective fiction. So is a happy ending!