Book Review
Policewoman: A Memoir (1964)
by Dorothy Uhnak
I'm really cleaning out the backlog on my Libby library app now that I've got my Kindle fired up. Policewoman: A Memoir was a recommendation from a member of my book club that likes to read crime-fiction. Uhnak was a trailblazer for women writing crime novels. She spent 14 years working for NYPD, 12 of it as a detective in the transit police division. After Policewoman was a hit, she launched a career as a writer of crime novels/police procedurals, but Policewoman is supposedly "mostly" based on her own experiences.
Policewoman is divided into chapters, each chapter has a different caper and mild criticism of the politics of the NYPD, though Uhnak doesn't go very far in terms of what we consider contemporary feminist ideology. Highlights include her take down of a much larger male mugger and several episodes where she is used as undercover bait: with a gaggle of school girls victimized by an indecent exposure, or for a fortune teller who steers women towards illegal abortionists.
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