Trailblazing Crime Writers in the Spotlight

Agatha Christie has the honor of being the bestselling mystery author in the world, but before she began her forty-year literary career back in 1920, women had been writing crime fiction for some seventy years.

In his anthology, “In the Shadow of Agatha Christie,” Editor Leslie S. Klinger showcases trailblazing women, who published crime stories between 1850 and 1917. Mostly unknown to today’s readers, these writers deserve recognition for their contribution to the crime and mystery genre. And thanks to Klinger, sixteen authors step out into the spotlight once again.

Many of the short stories in this anthology are out-of-print. However, a few names might be familiar to readers of classic mysteries. Elizabeth Gaskell, Carolyn Wells, and Baroness Orczy are still read. Baroness Orczy, whose contribution in this volume is “The Regent’s Park Murder,” is the author of the adventure novel “The Scarlet Pimpernel” which also enjoyed success as a play as well as two motion pictures, one produced in 1934 and a remake in 1982.

Here is a complete list of short stories in the anthology

Catherine Crowe – “The Advocate's Wedding Day”
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell – “The Squire's Story”
Mary Fortune – “Traces of Crime”
Harriet Prescott Spofford –“ Mr. Furbush”
Ellen Wood – “Mrs. Todhetley's Earrings”
Elizabeth Corbett – “Catching A Burglar”
C. L. Pirkis – “The Ghost of Fountain Lane”
Geraldine Bonner – “The Statement of Jared Johnson”
Ellen Glasgow – “Point in Morals”
L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace – “The Blood-Red Cross”
Baroness Orczy – “The Regent's Park Murder”
Augusta Groner – “The Case of the Registered Letter”
M. E. Braddon – “The Winning Sequence”
Anna Katherine Green – “Missing: Page Thirteen”
Carolyn Wells – “The Adventure of the Clothes-Line”
Susan Glaspell – “Jury of Her Peers”

Klinger, an authority on Sherlock Holmes, has also edited “In the Shadow of Sherlock Holmes” and “In the Shadow of Dracula.” Both feature authors whose works predate their more famous successors.