SHERLOCK HOLMES' FEMALE RIVALS! This unique collection for connoisseurs of detection done female style brings back six of the greatest fictional women sleuths of the era of gaslights and horseless carriages. Fans of Kinsey Milhone and other contemporary women detectives, as well as of Agatha Christie and Honey West, will love this collection featuring the foremothers of today's fictional female crime-fighters. Long out of print and unobtainable, these celebrated women 'tecs -Baroness Orczy's Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, Anna Katharine Green's Violet Strange, Arthur B. Reeve's Constance Dunlap, C. L. Pirkis' Loveday Brooke, Valentine's Daphne Wrayne, and Edgar Jepson and Robert Eustace's Ruth Kelstern – were once nearly as famous as fictional sleuth of Baker Street himself. Their fame waned in the long decades of the 1930s through the '80s, when female sleuths took a backseat to Sam Spade, Nero Wolfe, and the like. But, they are back to baffle and thrill contemporary readers in The Legendary Women Detectives edited by Jean Marie Stine.

In the mystery field, women have always led and men followed, ever since Anna Katherine Green penned one of the earliest detective stories, The Levenworth Case, in 1878 (nine years before Sherlock Holmes 1887 debut). Though men always stole their thunder – until recently, all the famous of detectivedom were of the male ilk, Sherlock Holmes, Perry Mason, Nero Wolf – the dames have always been right there, detecting along side the dicks (public and private), if overshadowed by them. Thank heaven all that has changed! Now many of the most popular, bestselling detective characters are female, and about time. When readers today are asked to name a famous fictional private eye, they are more likely to reply “Kinsey Milhone” or “V. I. Warshawski” than “Mathew Scudder” or even the ubiquitous “Spencer.”