Women Authors of Detective Series: Twenty‐One American and British Writers, 1900‐2000

This is an attractively produced little book featuring female detective writers. Starting with Dora Turnbill (“Patricia Wentworth”), Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, we progress, in chronological order of birth, to Patricia Cornwall, Carol Higgins Clark and Megan Rust. Each of the 21 authors has a chapter to herself, which includes a brief biographical background, a characterisation of their writing, and a list of their works. An introductory chapter sets the scene for the genre, and a final chapter, “Recapitulation and afterthoughts’’, highlights a number of themes such as common elements in the writers’ backgrounds, their fictional characters, use of pseudonyms,...