Nine of ten UK bestselling novels feature murdered female characters

A survey of this week's Sunday Times bestseller list found that nine of the top ten fiction paperbacks center on the death of at least one woman.

• Wendy Jones wrote that 84% of books on the list involve a woman being murdered for entertainment.
• Laura Wilson said female murder victims are far more likely to be killed by people they know than male victims.
• Denise Mina traced the trope to 18th-century broadsheet sellers who found that fabricated crimes sold copies when the victim was a pretty young white woman.
• Only The Correspondent, a novel about letter writing, broke the trend.