Growing up in the aftermath of the Women's Liberation Movement, I remember the legal and political fights regarding women joining police forces. The arguments were loud and long. Women are too weak, too soft, too emotional. Perps will disarm female cops and hurt them. No one takes women in uniform seriously. They will put their male partners in danger. And of course, having male and female cops working together will encourage the men to have affairs. The list is endless. The arguments were stacked against women joining the men in blue. Police academies did not take their applications seriously. Honestly, growing up in New York City in the 1960s and 1970s, all the cops were men. I don't ever remember seeing a female police officer. So I was genuinely surprised to learn women had a very proud, albeit narrow, role in the NYC police force.

Mari Eder paints a very vivid tale of the trials of women who broke through the male blue wall and found employment working as "girls who fought crime." What a fascinating story of these ladies who forged a path for all those to come in the next generations. Eder follows the evolution of the women as they made inroads into police work, eventually becoming investigators and detectives. The importance of their efforts opened a new dimension into the nuances of criminal investigations and the social medium surrounding them. Women, originally serving in auxillary ranks, quietly infiltrated the New York City police force, literally a few at a time, changing the role of cops and perpetrators and the impact of gender. Defying societal and conventional norms, these determined women wanted to participate in a world outside of home, hearth, and children. They brought their street smarts, their brains, and imagination to the task and succeeded against incredible odds. Eder's work shows the reality of the fight women had when entering an all male work force. Often for every step forward, it was two steps back. But these women succeeded.

Having read hundreds of women's history books, I found this particular story fascinating. The women weren't portrayed in gendered stereotypes but as real women with real ambition and real lives. While it is a quick and easy read, it is a very "New York" book. Neighborhoods are mentioned as well as politicians and famous people known to native New Yorkers. For those not from the Empire state, it might be a slight hindrance. Still, it is worth the read and be inspired these early women who knocked holes in the blue wall of the NYPD. Having said all this, there are problems with Eder's work. She readily admits records are missing and she lacks evidence for many of the stories she includes. There's dialogue included without any citation or acknowledgement that it is dramatized. As a historian, these are big red flags for me and alters my perception of the work. The book might have worked better if it was a historical novel.

I think this book will probably appeal to teenage readers or people who don't read much nonfiction. The style is accessible, and the book is quick.

Mary "Mae" Foley was a force to be reckoned with. She chose to join the NYPD and fought for justice. From guarding the female witnesses against Lucky Luciano to nabbing criminals on the street, Foley proudly protected her neighbors. She also sought to overcome the male-heavy force and sterotypes against female cops. Although she didn't change the status quo, she did earn respect. And her story deserves to be read.
I enjoyed this story. Mae is a hero! She had a big personality and the ability to stay true to the job. I'm excited to read more about this groundbreaking cop.

I loved learning about some of the first police women in American history. As someone who has a bachelor degree in Criminal Justice I want to know why I didn't learn any of this in my college Criminal Justice classes.

Really nice microhistory about the first women to serve in the New York City Police Force. These women had such fascinating lives and were able to break a lot of barriers. The author has a nice mix of research that gives a good picture of what their lives were like.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for a review, but all opinions are my own.

Princess Fuzzypants here: In 2023 it is often hard for young women to imagine what it was like trying to follow an unorthodox dream back in the 1950s. Women were told they had specific things to which they could aspire and if you dared to resist being pigeon-holed, life was challenging to say the least. Now travel back to those women’s grandmothers and great grandmothers, back to the turn of the 20th Century and imagine you are a young woman who dreams of fighting crime in NYC. It boggles the mind what strength and determination these women must have had to break through the barriers to become first appendages to the NYPD and then, begrudgingly and under-appreciated, integral parts of the service.

While the book does tell some of the story of a number of such heroines, it focuses mostly on Mae Foley who in her long and illustrious career wore many hats, all extremely well, and who, upon her death in 1968 was given the honours which she had earned time and again. Her tale was one of perseverance as she often battled crime as well as social perceptions and out and out misogyny both from the criminal element and the top brass.

She still managed to live a full life in which she travelled the world. She saw so much. She lived so much. It is a fascinating story. I do wish however, that some of the historical dates had been checked a bit closer. It has her travelling to Berlin in 1930 where, according to the author, Hitler was in power. The Nazis were a force with which to be reckoned but it was not for another three years that they grabbed total control. Mistakes like that really irk me and make mew wonder what other details might have been wrong. But I would not dismiss the book for the error. It is a story that should be told and has been told in an entertaining way. Four purrs and two paws up.

In a fictionalized account of Mary “Mae” Foley’s fascinating life, Mari K. Eder brings the story of one of the first female police officers in the New York Police Department. Acting as a history of women police officers in the NYPD and a biography of Mae Foley with a narrative and fictional style, this book is an incredibly compelling read. Eder’s inclusion of pictures, documents, and other paraphernalia adds to the text, with the images and other documents emphasizing Foley’s unique historical position and situation in the twentieth century. Covering several of Foley’s cases and daily interactions on the “Masher Squad,” Eder emphasizes the significance of these early trailblazers, their roles in traditionally male occupations, and the impact they had on recruiting and inspiring other women to take up the challenge to these systems. Eder ties Foley’s work to the slowly increasing presence of women in the modern police force and the impact that women police officers can have on their communities, impacts which Foley herself sees glimpses of during her time in the NYPD. Biographies of women like Mae Foley emphasize a larger historical tradition of groundbreaking women who broke barriers and glass ceilings on such a large scale.

“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.

This is an interesting book about this woman named m a c f OLLEY. Who became a policewoman in New York City as a pioneering woman. This was interesting because she also had a family. And she did all these uncover stuff and how she fought together. Women into the trades as well. To get more women involved in the police department. This is pretty courageous for her to do this. She also traveled alone, which was pretty much unheard of in the 20s and the 30s, but she did it anyway. To travel alone while she left her husband home. This was very unusual for a woman at this time. This was very unusual for women at this time to travel like this. Her husband dies but she raises her two daughters alone which was pretty amazing. Women are very strong, and they have to be especially when they walk into a man's field. Because I think for a week and we cannot handle stuff. I like these books because it shows how women had to overcome a lot of obstacles on those days and how brave they have to be. She had a remarkable life and she had a great retirement. She saw a lot of changes too. Because as more women entered the police force, she was really like a Pioneer like getting these women to do this..

Mary “Mae” Foley is one of the more interesting women I had never heard of. A policewoman in a time when there were few women on the force [she was one of the original 67 women who made up the first policewoman force in Manhattan], Mae was also a mother, a wife, and eventually, a world traveler. Her story is an amazing one and the things she did and was able to accomplish is nothing short of astonishing [her ability to go off and travel, ALONE, in a time when women didn't go anywhere alone, is nothing short of awe inspiring]. While I wish this book was longer and more fleshed out, what I DID read what well written, and the story told in such a way that I was never once not engaged with Mae's life and all that she was accomplishing [can you imagine having to infiltrate the Nazi party in the US? UGH. She did it though and many were brought to justice for the hate they were spreading]. I really enjoyed listening to her story.

Thank you to NetGalley, Maj. Gen. Mari K. Eder [U.S. Army - Retired], and SOURCEBOOKS [nonfiction], for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I find this book informative and interesting as it talks about the first female corps in NYPD and I liked to learn about those women who were clever and strong.
It's an informative and entertaining book that I recommend
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

The Girls Who Fought Crime by Mari K. Eder is a fascinating look at female members and roles of the New York Police Department in its early days, particularly that of Mary "Mae" Vermell Foley. Mae was a wife, mother, police officer, spy and detective from which she retired in 1945. Her expertise in jujitsu came in handy several times. She was stoic and had to put up with abusive and dangerous criminals as well as gender disparity in her field. She infiltrated Nazi movements and was a proud member of the "Masher Squad". Medical fraud was rampant. Her passion for international travel really appeals to me as an avid international traveler myself.

Unknown female trailblazers such as Mae are enlightening to read about. I had not heard of her before. She seems like she was a humble woman who did not wish to draw attention to herself or her contributions.

My criticism is that the title doesn't compute with the topic as the focus was mainly on one woman with brief mentions of a few others. But what a life Mae lived! The inclusion of photographs adds a welcome personal touch.

My sincere thank you to SOURCEBOOKS and NetGalley for providing me with a digital copy of this interesting book.

I was really interested in learning more about the first women to join the NYPD and the history of women in police work in America. Unfortunately, it turns out that the NYPD didn't keep any of the records of its early days (apparently they got thrown into the river in the '70s?!), so much of what author Mari Eder has to work with are newspaper articles, family memories, and fictionalized conversations of what might have happened at any given time- and it isn't always easy to tell which is fact and which is fictionalized history. A historical fiction of Mae's life would be amazing- she was clearly an incredible woman and a trailblazer in the police force.

As a history, this was more hit-and-miss. I was expecting more, quite honestly. Maybe this was impossible because of the lack of materials. Maybe the title misled me. But I thought this was going to be more about the women as a whole, their successes and challenges, and how things changed or didn't over the course of the twentieth century. There was a little of that and I certainly learned interesting things. But the book couldn't quite decide if it was a biography only, with a bit of history thrown in; more history with a bit of biography; or historical fiction. The writing was light and mostly ok, occasionally repetitive. Nothing really deep was explored. Whether that was because the book couldn't through lack of sources or didn't want to is unclear.

I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

For the student of women’s studies, especially in women’s impacts on law enforcement this is an in-depth writing. The women’s stories told in these pages is truly amazing. The prejudices they faced and the behaviors they had to tolerate from their male colleagues is all too telling. This is definitely not a light read as it is fairly detailed and slows its pace throughout. For pure facts, it is far and away the truest of accounts.

The concept of this book was fantastic. The execution was not. Mae Foley was a force to be reckoned with in the early NYPD and I am glad to now know of her existence, however, the poor and inconsistent writing style made this book a bit painful. As other reviewers have said, the book bounced back and forth between non-fiction and historical fiction to fill in the details. This would have been workable if there was a story arc to accompany that, but sadly there was not and it just rambled on. Many of details of this early policing era have been lost and this is fairly evident from the lack of detail in the story - the audience was repeatedly told that Mae was a force, rather than shown it through examples. I wish that, truer to the title, this book had been a compilation of stories about a variety of policewomen. Including, multiple of the women that got random, very interesting but usually unrelated, side-tangents in this story. After reading this, I still don’t think I could tell you a lot about Mae Foley, but I am glad to know slightly more about the history of policewomen in general. There is a great concept here that I wish had spent more time in editing to really find it. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

The Girls Who Fought Crime by Mari K. Eder
Publisher Sourcebooks
Release Date August 08, 2023


Eder has written a book that hinges as a biography about Mary “Mae” Foley who was one of the first female police officers with the NYPD. At that time women were not taken too seriously and wearing a badge would have most likely had the men laughing in her face. However, she was not one to be reckoned with. With that being said, notable women such as Foley, should have all the information about their lives put into a book that was written about her. This book was missing quite a lot about certain time periods. Eder mentioned that it was significantly harder than she thought to find pertinent information about Foley and therefore it seems that she just filled in the blanks with what she thought would pacify the reader. I am not saying the information is not true, I am just saying that there were relatives that had knowledge of her time as a police officer or even before that when she worked as a social worker. The narrative of this story certainly seems to fit more in the fiction genre. I hope to learn more about our heroine, Foley, and maybe even by the author who did a great job of researching the information she does have.

3 stars

Thank you to NetGalley as well as the author and publisher for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my unbiased and honest review.

Mae Foley was definitely a force to be reckoned with. Mari Eder does a wonderful job at conveying her story. I wasn't familiar with Mae prior to reading THE GIRLS WHO FOUGHT CRIME, but I thought the premise sounded interesting. I'm really glad I picked this one up. The historical research is woven into a smart and interesting story. This is a piece of history well worth illuminating. I look forward to more from this author.

This is the story of Mae Foley, one of the first women of the NYPD. This is more a biography of Mae and her career than a story of her crime squad, as the title implies. I think the title, especially the subtitle, are a bit misleading. I think it could’ve been the girl (singular) etc. implying the focus on Mae.

I wanted this book to be amazing - like Eder's former book "Girls Who Stepped Out of Line" - but it just wasn't. The source material simply wasn't there. Eder tried, she really did. It just didn't come together. The book ended up being sort of shallow; we don't get very much insight into Mae as a person or her motivations. And while Eder tried to flesh out the narrative with a few "dramatic" fiction scenes, it just doesn't come together for me. This should probably just have been a fiction novel. When the source material isn't there, sometimes to need to resort to fiction to bridge the gap.

This is the story of Mary "Mae" Foley, one of the first female police officers in the New York Police Department. She fought to establish the first female auxiliary police force in 1920, which 2000 women joined. Her story is still relevant today, considering that when Foley retired in 1945 12% of the force was female and in 2019 that was only up to 18%. Foley's transition from social work to police work reflected women's original role in the NYPD as support for socially-oriented causes, especially protection of women and children. In fact, studies have shown over the years that policewomen have been shown to reduce violence and abuse of power. Typically they are more educated than their male counterparts and are more likely to see people as human beings first, and as suspects/victims second. There is a good case to be made for more female integration into this male-dominated career, and we should all celebrate the fact that NYPD just named its first female commissioner, Keechant Sewell, in 2022.

I applaud the effort to share this story as narrative nonfiction, but I felt that it didn't quite make it. The attempts at imagined dialogue seemed forced to me, and it could have used smoother transitions between the vignettes. But the basic content was fascinating and very well-researched, including first-hand accounts of Foley by her family and by contemporary sources. I found it to be inspirational and timely, and admire Foley as a pioneer in her field, successfully finding a way to have a family and a career, despite the challenges and obstacles.