Women of Mystery: The Lives and Works of Notable Women Crime Novelists
This handy biocritical guide to female crime novelists offers short essays on 18 authors, beginning with Anna Katherine Green and Mary Roberts Rinehart, moving through the Golden Age (Christie, Sayers, Marsh, Allingham, and Tey), and finishing with a sampling of moderns, including P. D. James, Sue Grafton, and Patricia Cornwell. DuBose mixes critical commentary on her subjects' work with relatively brief biographical sketches. Bibliographies are included for each of the profiled authors. Much of the biographical material will be familiar to fans (Anne Perry's secret past as a convicted murderer; P. D. James' career in hospital administration), but there is considerable value, especially for students and researchers, in gathering this material together. In addition, DuBose's critical comments, though generally laudatory, are often quite perceptive. She is particularly good on the Golden Age authors and on establishing connections from one era to the next (the influence of Patricia Highsmith, for example, on such modern masters of psychological suspense as Ruth Rendell). In all, a functional addition to the mystery reference shelf.Bill OttCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved