My name is Paige Turner (no laughing or groaning or rolling eyes, please!), and I’m an investigative reporter for a popular true crime magazine, Daring Detective. At this particular point in time-Wednesday, October 19, 1955-I’m the only female crime reporter in all of Manhattan… probably even the whole country. And you can take it from me, that’s a darn scary place for a woman to be (even when she’s not in the process of probing into and writing about the most abhorrent murder scandal she’s ever encountered in her short but stressful career).

I’m not complaining, mind you. I really love my job. I’ve wanted to be a crime and mystery writer since the age of fourteen, when I discovered that reading Erle Stanley Gardner and Rex Stout was a lot more fun than studying Shakespeare. And now, at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, I’m really proud that I’ve finally broken through the gender barrier to become a Daring Detective staff writer, and that I’ve managed to develop and expand a couple of my true DD stories into twenty-five-cent paperback novels (like the one you’re reading now).

It hasn’t been easy, though. And as hard as it was for me to break into the “manly” world of crime periodicals and paper-backs, that’s how tough it’s been to maintain my position.

Did I say tough? Ha! That’s an understatement if ever I wrote one. Being the only woman on the six-member staff of a testosterone-driven magazine like Daring Detective is downright treacherous. Except for Lenny Zimmerman-the skinny, smart, bespectacled art assistant who’s my only friend in the office-all of my male coworkers would like nothing better than to see me stripped naked, tarred and feathered, and run out of the publishing business on a rail. They simply can’t handle having a determined, ambitious, and reasonably attractive young woman running alongside (and in some cases ahead) of them in the nine-to-five rat race. It threatens their supremacy and makes them turn beastly.