Women of Mystery: The Lives and Works of Notable Women Crime Novelists

In this remarkable book, Martha Hailey DuBose has given those multitudes of readers who love the mystery novel an indispensable addition to their libraries. Unlike other works on the subject, Women of Mystery is not merely a directory of the novelists and their publications with a few biographical details. DuBose combines extensive research into the lives of significant women mystery writers from Anna Katherine Green and Mary Roberts Rinehart with critical essays on their work, anecdotes, contemporary reviews and opinions and some of the women's own comments. She takes us through the Golden Age of the British women mystery writers, Christie, Sayers, Marsh, Allingham and Tey, to the leading crime novelists of today, focused on the women who have become legends of the genre. And though she laments, "so many mysteries, so little time," she makes a good effort a mentioning "some of the best of the rest."

When DuBose writes of the lives of her principal players, she relates them to their times, their families, their personal situations and above all to their books. She subtly points out that Sayers, whose experience with the men in her life was inevitably disastrous, created in Lord Peter the ideal lover -- one who is all that a woman desires and needs. DuBose gives us the curriculum vitae that Dorothy Sayers created to help her bring Peter Wimsey to a virtual actuality. Ngaio Marsh would give up an active presence in the theatrical world she loved, but she recreated it for herself as well as her readers in many of her novels. The biographies of these woman are as engrossing as the stories they wrote, and Martha DuBose has shined a different, intimate and intriguing light on them, their works, and the lives that informed those works.

This book is so full of treasure it's hard to see how any mystery enthusiast will be able to do without it. And what a gift it would make for anyone on your list who has been heard to announce "I love a mystery."

Some of the treats inside: In the Beginning: The Mothers of Detection

Anna Katherine Green

Mary Roberts Rinehart A Golden Era: The Genteel Puzzlers

Agatha Christie

Dorothy L. Sayers

Ngaio Marsh

Margery Allingham

Josephine Tey Modern Motives: Mysteries of the Murderous Mind

Patricia Highsmith

P.D. James

Ruth Rendell

Mary Higgins Clark

Sue Grafton and more!!

© 2000 Minotaur Books (Ebook): 9780312276553

Release date

Ebook: 11 December 2000