I love Marie Benedict’s portraits of little-known or misunderstood female historical figures. THE QUEENS OF CRIME, a mystery within a mystery, is a profile of Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers set during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.

When we meet Dorothy --- the creator of upper-class amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey --- she is joining Agatha for tea. Though the two are peers in the crime fiction genre, she has an ulterior motive for their meeting: an opportunity that she hopes Agatha won’t shy away from, despite her recent brush with media notoriety after her 11-day disappearance in 1926. (Readers of Benedict no doubt will know all about this, having read THE MYSTERY OF MRS. CHRISTIE in 2020.)

Dorothy has just joined forces with Gilbert Keith Chesterton to launch the Detection Club, soon to be the preeminent organization of mystery writers. In 1930s England, genre fiction (like mysteries and thrillers) is still considered low-brow, despite high demand from readers and notable sales. Banding together with Gilbert, Dorothy hopes to change the way crime fiction is perceived. Although they share a vision for the genre at large, they differ on one notable opinion: Gilbert thinks that two female members are enough --- more than enough, you might say --- while Dorothy believes that there are too many excellent women crime writers to stop the count at two.

In her usual glass-ceiling-breaking way, Dorothy launches a plan. Along with Agatha, an accepted member, she will usher in several other popular fiction writers --- all women --- in the hopes that Gilbert will find their arrival too surprising to raise a fuss. Thus Baroness Emma Orczy, New Zealander Ngaio Marsh, and bright Margery Allingham also become members of the Detection Club. In name, at least.

"Equal parts historical fiction and compelling whodunit, THE QUEENS OF CRIME is Marie Benedict at her best, a lively takedown of the patriarchy backed by real-world examples and true grit."

The male members remain uneager to welcome in their female compatriots, so sleuth-minded Dorothy crafts yet another scheme. If she and her female cohorts --- who call themselves the Queens of Crime --- really want to be accepted for their ingenuity and craft, penning the perfect or bestselling mystery is not enough. Instead, they’ll need to solve a real-life crime to earn their spots at the table. It’s a tall order for most, but Dorothy has a connection.

Mac Fleming, Dorothy's husband and a reporter for News of the World, has just been asked to journey to Boulogne, France, to investigate the disappearance of May Daniels, a 21-year-old nurse from London. May and her friend, Cecilia, boarded a ferry to Boulogne, visited the shops, and ducked into a restroom before their return trip. Or at least that was the plan. Instead, May went to the ladies’ room, Cecilia stood just outside, and May vanished into thin air. There were no alternate exits in the restroom, no suspects, and no indication of where May could have gone. It’s a literal locked-room mystery that you typically only see in, well, an Agatha Christie novel. Therefore, who better to solve it than the same writers who made a name for the genre? Enter the Queens of Crime.

Of course, 1930s England (and France, for that matter) is still a patriarchal era, so Dorothy and her fellow Queens will need to employ some serious subterfuge to kick off their investigation. While Dorothy accompanies Mac to Boulogne, the others follow along, with Dorothy planning to secretly meet with them each day after joining Mac at his police press conferences. On their very first day, the news breaks that May’s body has been found near a park, just under a tree, with a syringe nearby. The press, including (disappointingly) Mac, is quick to capitalize on the scandal: a young nurse trekking to a foreign country in search of or selling drugs. Case closed.

But to the skilled thriller writer (and, frankly, the even mediocre reader), the case is a tad too tidy. May is found with none of her effects save her wallet, which includes the ID needed to correctly identify her body despite months of decay. The syringe is a nice touch, but May boasts no scars or track marks (and Dorothy is quick to wonder why a nurse would need to go anywhere but her own job for a bit of morphine). In fact, she died of strangulation, yet her body sits atop a deep stain of blood. Pairing these lukewarm discoveries with Agatha’s astute observation that women bleed for many reasons, the Queens of Crime land on a shared hunch: May was murdered, most likely by a man, and tidily so. This method suggests not just intent, but planning.

As the Queens of Crime set out to recreate the last day, week and month of May’s life, they continue to stumble upon clues and evidence either ignored by the police or written off as the inane gossiping of women. Each discovery unearths a new failing by the authorities, and each clue brings them closer to finding out what really happened to May. Soon the women realize that they no longer want to solve the crime for themselves. They want to do it for May, even though the media is quick to write her off as a “surplus woman” or whore.

Although the women are skilled at plotting --- and therefore, unplotting --- mysteries, they are not trained detectives, and they soon find that their questioning has not gone unnoticed. When Dorothy is attacked one night in London and her biggest secret is threatened, the women know that they’re on to something --- and that someone is on to them. Can the biggest names in crime fiction put their skills to the test in the real world, or should that be left to its “kings”? Well, if you don’t know the answer, you clearly haven’t read a Marie Benedict novel.

Just as she did in THE MYSTERY OF MRS. CHRISTIE, Benedict immerses her readers in the Golden Age of Crime Fiction and the insular but welcoming world of mystery writers. Readers who frequent ThrillerFest or other thriller author events will know that this camaraderie runs deep. But Benedict really heightens the tension by exploring the roots of this connection, as well as all the ways that it once excluded marginalized writers. Pairing this history lesson with a riveting whodunit, she imagines the perfect mystery: mystery writers uncovering a mystery while hiding mysteries of their own.

This combination is spellbinding, a surefire hit, yet Benedict is not content to rest on a strong premise alone. Instead, she crafts characters who live and breathe on the page --- employing their known histories, but also her own fictional flair --- to make every discovery, every clue and every red herring feel as immediate and real as the very book in your hands. In doing so, she carefully unpacks the misogyny of the genre’s start, not to mention the perception of women in general, to remind readers that women have always been there and known a bit more than their male counterparts.

Equal parts historical fiction and compelling whodunit, THE QUEENS OF CRIME is Marie Benedict at her best, a lively takedown of the patriarchy backed by real-world examples and true grit.