DeAnn's Reviews > The Queens of Crime

4 True Crime Stars - now available

This is my second book by Marie Benedict, but I enjoy her writing so much that I’m going back and reading some of her older titles! She’s a master at historical writing that brings real people to life.

In this story, we have five female crime writers (of course, Agatha Christie is among them) who band together in a club and decide to tackle an actual murder case and try to solve it. Dorothy Sayers is the main character in this one, and while I have heard of her, I haven’t read any of her books. Those are on my list now, too!

Watching these five women solve a crime like their book detectives and build a friendship was quite a ride. It was harder to read about how women were treated and thought of in the 1930s. Nursing was not a good profession; once pregnant, no woman could work. There were more women than men after WWI (and WWII). Despite contributions during the war, the women are now considered “surplus women” and expected to return to traditional household roles. Women were considered below men on so many levels. I’m glad some progress has been made on these fronts.

The women travel to France and all over England to solve the murder of Nurse May Daniels and redeem her name. I loved the ingenuity of the women and this was a delightful story to lose myself in for a few hours!

This was a good buddy read with Marilyn. Be sure to check out her review to see if she liked it, too.

My thanks to St. Martin's Press for the opportunity to read and honestly review this one.