WOMEN OF MYSTERY
edited by Cynthia Manson
Fifteen stories reprinted from either Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine or Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, each written by a woman and featuring a woman heroine, who, all too frequently, is either rescued by a man—Patricia McGeer's kidnapping in Israel; Elizabeth A. Dalton's wife-beating husband; Dorothy Salisbury Davis's date from hell; Anne Perry's disruptive, 1894-set house- party—or perkily demanding to be taken as seriously as a man— Janet Stockey's good-cop/bad-cop scenario; B.K. Stevens's novice p.i. Also included—with more interesting results—are Ruth Rendell, whose theft of a thief (``A Pair of Yellow Lilies'') appears in other anthologies; Antonia Fraser and Amanda Cross, with disappearing-woman cases for Jemima Shore and Kate Fansler; Faye Kellerman with the mystery of a discarded diamond ring for Detective Andrea Darling; Sara Paretsky with a stop-and-(literally) go murder for V.I. Warshawski; and Celia Fremlin with the best story here: a white lie turns into an inadvertent alibi that leads to thoughts of murder. Mostly one more attempt to cash in on the burgeoning women-in- mystery market and, considering the names involved, a surprisingly amateurish compilation.