Happy false Spring! Five years ago this week, we were frozen here in Central Texas - no electricity or water for a week with temperatures below freezing. Today it is 81 degrees and sunny. That is also scary to a degree, (no pun intended) because it is 15 degrees above "normal", so what does that mean for summer?
For February, the Mystery Book Club read The Queens of Crime by Marie Benedict. This was recommended to me by the founder of the MBC and book buddy Kay, She has an excellent blog if you would like to see more of her recommendations here: https://kaysreadinglife.blogspot.com
About: "The New York Times bestselling author of The Mystery of Mrs. Christie returns with a thrilling story of Christie’s legendary rival Dorothy Sayers, the race to solve a murder, and the power of friendship among women.
London, 1930. The five greatest women crime writers have banded together to form a secret society with a single goal: to show they are no longer willing to be treated as second-class citizens by their male counterparts in the legendary Detection Club. Led by the formidable Dorothy L. Sayers, the group includes Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Baroness Emma Orczy. They call themselves the Queens of Crime. Their plan? Solve an actual murder, that of a young woman found strangled in a park in France who may have connections leading to the highest levels of the British establishment.May Daniels, a young English nurse on an excursion to France with her friend, seemed to vanish into thin air as they prepared to board a ferry home. Months later, her body is found in the nearby woods. The murder has all the hallmarks of a locked room mystery for which these authors are famous: how did her killer manage to sneak her body out of a crowded train station without anyone noticing? If, as the police believe, the cause of death is manual strangulation, why is there is an extraordinary amount of blood at the crime scene? What is the meaning of a heartbreaking secret letter seeming to implicate an unnamed paramour? Determined to solve the highly publicized murder, the Queens of Crime embark on their own investigation, discovering they’re stronger together. But soon the killer targets Dorothy Sayers herself, threatening to expose a dark secret in her past that she would do anything to keep hidden.
Inspired by a true story in Sayers’ own life, New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict brings to life the lengths to which five talented women writers will go to be taken seriously in the male-dominated world of letters as they unpuzzle a mystery torn from the pages of their own novels."
This book was a unanimous thumbs up by the book club members.
The book is written in a traditional mystery style, just like an Agatha Christi novel. The characters and the plot unwind slowly, making it easy to picture it all in your head. One person did say she would love to see this book made into a movie. The five women are all very different and their styles all different. It is fun to read the descriptions of them all. There are a couple of differing opinions amongst the group. Afterall, they are all intelligent, independent and successful authors. The five form a club within the mostly men's club - The Detection Club. Their goal is to get more women into the all men's club. Dorothy (Sayers') determines the best way to do that is to solve a real crime and show the men their sleuthing abilities. The apparent murder of May Daniels after her disappearance, happens to be in the news, so they choose this apparent crime to solve.
Besides being a good mystery (only one person in our book club guessed the bad guy), the true stories that are woven into the book are just as interesting. All of the Queens were well known authors of their time. The Detection Club was and still is a real "club". Dorothy Sayers was one of the few original women invited to join. Sayers did write the oath they are recite when joining. She and her husband did investigate the death of May Daniels. And much more. I think all of us ended up reading more about the five authors and would like to read some of their works. All are familiar with Agatha Christi, and some have heard of Dorothy Sayers but Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Baroness Emma Orczy are not familiar.
We all recommend this book!
Marie Benedict writes historical fiction and releases new books annually. It doesn't appear that The Queens of Crime will be a series. To read more about the author and her books, find here:
https://authormariebenedict.com
