Top 10 female detectives

Anne Holt is one of Norway's most successful crime novelists.

For the Guardian, she named her top 10 female detectives. One character on her list:

Lisbeth Salander

In Lisbeth Salander, Stieg Larsson created the toughest nut in Sweden. Like Modesty [Blaise, the heroine of the cult comic strip created by writer Peter O'Donnell], she's also a relative orphan, abandoned and abused by a corrupt state. On the outside, she is a socially awkward diminutive gothic punk, but smouldering under the surface there's a tough, kick-boxing, Taser-wielding terror. She's as indifferent to physical pain as she is to people, a world-class computer hacker with a fierce intelligence and a photographic memory. A complete original.

Read about the other detectives on Holt's list.

See Adrian McKinty's list of the ten best lady detectives.

--Marshal Zeringue