Noir is traditionally a male preserve, all gumshoes lurking in corners, cigarettes drooping from cynically downturned mouths. If women exist it is as victims – wounded bodies shot or stabbed and usually found in a state of undress by our hero – or femme fatales, double-crossing their way through the plot in sharp shoes.

Now that's all changing. From American authors Megan Abbott, Gillian Flynn and Christa Faust to Brits Cathi Unsworth, Dreda Say Mitchell and Joolz Denby, a new generation of women crime writers are making themselves at home on noir's mean streets.

And with that change comes a different look for some of noir's most revered tropes. These writers give voice to the women who so often inhabit the fringes of noir, placing prostitutes, female gang members and porn stars centre stage, allowing them to be not the victims but the (anti) heroes of their tales.

They are also unafraid to tackle the worst side of female behaviour. Abbott's recent Dare Me follows a group of damned and damaged cheerleaders as they compete both in their sport and against each other, while the lost girls of Flynn's compelling Midwestern noirs Gone Girl, Sharp Objects and Dark Places sometimes lie and often cheat, damaging themselves and those they are closest to.

Similarly, Unsworth's latest novel Weirdo is both a seaside noir set in Norfolk in the 1980s and the present day, and an unflinching study of the horrors of teenage friendship. "Girls do such evil things to each other, they can be so manipulative and cunning," Unsworth says. "The Sophie Lancaster case, where she was murdered for being different, really affected me – there's so much pressure put on you not to stand out and I wanted to look at that, to explore why teenage girls have this need for one girl to be queen and the others ladies-in-waiting …"

Unsworth, who was called the "Queen of Noir" by author David Peace, is glad that more women are turning to dark crime fiction – "I think it's important that you have female voices, that you get to hear that side of the story" – but admits that British fiction has a long way to go before it catches up with its counterparts in the US.

"Writers like Megan and Christa can write what they want but I'm not sure that's yet the case here," she says. "Women crime writers are still pigeonholed. There's definitely more pressure on women to write a series character, essentially to write mainstream crime. Publishers will often say that male readers don't like women writing noir, although I've found that's not actually the case."