3.5 stars. This is all about one woman, so the title is a bit misleading. Others are mentioned but only briefly. There are some strange scenes of invented dialogue between May and her daughters throughout the book, but never enough to fully get to know them.
I did enjoy learning about May as a person, feisty policewoman and adventurous traveler. ( )

The Girls Who Fought Crime explores the history of women in the New York City police department largely through the life of one female officer, Mae Foley. This account presents Mae as a larger-than-life character who bent the world to her will. It seems that there were few people, men or women, who could say “no” to Mae when she had her mind set on something.

Mae’s voice and the voices of other women who served alongside her add value to 20th century women’s history. I can’t wholeheartedly recommend this work due to the liberties the author seems to have taken in the telling of Mae’s story. She adds colorful details that no one could possibly know unless Mae had kept a detailed diary or wrote about the conversation in a letter. For instance, the author quotes a conversation that Mae had with her husband John:

”Hmm.” John was reading the newspaper. “Says here there’s a Liberty Loan parade coming up on October 25. They have a real German U-boat in the parade. Now that ought to be a sight to see. You want to go, Mae? Take the girls?”

“John Henry Foley, are you listening to me? I’m talking about runaways.”

John tried again. “Okay, if you don’t want to go to the parade, the city is going to park the U-boat in Central Park. Right there in the Sheep Meadow. You can tour it if you buy war bonds. What do you think?” John looked up, made eye contact. It was a mistake.

“Right there in the Sheep Meadow? John, there are young girls out there right now, far from home and getting into trouble.” Mae stomped her foot for emphasis. As a parent, she knew how to talk to the excitable young girls who thought their trip to New York was all a big adventure. In the back of her mind in every encounter was the thought of her own two girls at home. “What would you do if Florence tried something like this?”

John got the message. He folded the newspaper and looked up.

What source does the author have for this conversation? How does she know that John read this article in the newspaper and that he had a conversation with Mae about it? How does she know that Mae “stomped her foot for emphasis?” How does she know when John looked up at Mae, and when he folded the newspaper? There are no sources referenced for this conversation, so I can only conclude that the author embellished the narrative. This type of technique is used in creative nonfiction, which is the genre that best fits this work. Perhaps creative nonfiction is the best the author could do given the dearth of records documenting the early years of the NYPD. This book gives readers a glimpse of what life might have been like for a woman police officer in the NYPD in the first half of the 20th century. However, it will frustrate readers who want to go beyond feelings to facts. ( )

The title of this book misleads a bit because it really is the story of one woman in context. The loss of many NYPD records which lie at the bottom of a river somewhat hampered the story. The museum closure in 2019 also hampered the search for information. The author did piece together the story of Mae Foley, one of the early women to serve and protect on the NYPD. While we know a little of what she encountered, I know there are many more stories that were not uncovered through available sources which would have given more insight into her work. We see as much of the real life of the woman as we do her police life--her concern for her children, her love of travel, her love of Broadway and film, etc. We learn of one undercover operation in which she engaged during the war years that she very much disliked, but I'm sure this is one that she talked about with her family after the war. She retired at age 57, having served for 27 years. One other theme in the book is the inequity between men and women in the NYPD, particularly in pay, but also in the opportunities offered to them. Even in 2020, women only comprise 20% of the force. I would have liked to know more of Mae's work because I feel we heard very few details of "fighting crime" and more about NYPD politics. ( )

“She was a policewoman, a detective, a crime solver, a meticulous investigator, a wife, and a mother….She never considered she couldn’t have what she wanted, be what she wanted. She just decided she would. And she did.”

In The Girls Who Fought Crime, Mari Eder documents the early history of women working in the New York Police Service with a focus on the trailblazing career of Mary “Mae” Vermell Foley.

Born in 1886, Mae was eleven years old and rescuing her younger brother from a bully when she first announced she wanted to be a police officer. At the time, barely a handful of women were employed by the New York City Police Department as precinct ‘matrons’, older women who essentially acted as housemothers. It was 1915 before Mae got her foot in the door, playing an instrumental role in the establishment of the Women’s Police Reserve, but her opportunity to officially join the NYPD as a sworn officer didn’t arrive until 1923, by which time she was a 36 year old wife and mother of two.

Eder shares some of the highlights of Mae’s extraordinary and varied career until her retirement in late 1945. Among the more standard tasks assigned to female police officers such as dealing with runaways, pickpockets, and prostitutes, Mae arrested frauds, pimps, thieves, rapists, mashers and murderers, raided speakeasy’s, protected mob witnesses, and spied on Nazi’s during World War 2. She was a tough, skilled and courageous woman who served with dedication and integrity.

In telling Mae’s story, Eder also details historical milestones and significant figures who had a role in the early years of women policing, like Isabella Goodwin who was the first woman to be awarded a first-grade detective shield, and Captain Edna Pitkin, a former broadway star, who was the first to volunteer to test the bullet proof vest.

Eder admits she found it difficult to gather information for this book. There was little written about women in the NYPD in the early twentieth century, and no NYPD personnel records are available at all before 1930. I think this contributes to the somewhat scattered narrative, and timeline, of the book as Eder attempts to both tell a story and document history.

Nevertheless, I found The Girls Who Fought Crime to be fascinating, revealing interesting information about the history of woman policing in New York, and I’m really glad Mae, and her contemporaries, receive the recognition they deserve. ( )

The title is more in keeping with the language of the early years of having women in the NYPD, this is notably the biography of one very notable woman police detective. She was a very real and exemplary person who loved to travel for leisure to balance the very real policing she did. Not a desk jockey, but a police investigator of the first order and one who would be proud of the NYPD for reaching its goal of 20% women by 2020 and encouraging of the department's goal of 30% by 2030. There is also included a potted history of women who made a real difference in policing from before the turn of the 20th century until the present.
Did you know that in the first half of that century the WOMEN recruits were required to have a college degree? But not the men?
I requested and received an EARC from Sourcebooks via NetGalley. Thank you! ( )