Margaret C. Thomas

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

Martha Hailey Dubose, Margaret C. Thomas

• 2001 Anthony-Critical nominee
• 2001 Edgar-Critical/Biography nominee
• 2001 Macavity-Nonfiction nominee
• 2000 Agatha–Nonfiction nominee
• Score: 24.51

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…