When we think of early fictional private detectives, we tend to think of Sherlock Holmes and other men. However, there are several women who either wrote or starred in detective stories, even before Agatha Christie made mystery publicly welcome to women. The Legendary Women Detectives: 6 Classic Novelets, edited by Jean Marie Stine, introduces us to six such stories from the gaslight era.
“The Man in the Inverness Cape” by Baroness Orczy, sleuth: Lady Molly. Mr. Leonard Marvel, a newspaper man recently relocated to London from Scotland, has disappeared. A few days later, Miss Lulu Fay comes forward to state that she had dinner with Mr. Marvel the last night he was seen. She announces that he got her to give him her jewels to reset them and £200 to pay for the associated costs. She saw him go off with her fiancé, Lord Mountnewt, and that was the last anyone saw of him. They call in Scotland Yard, which assigns the case to Lady Molly, who quickly solves the case.
“The Problem of the Second Bullet” by Anna Katherine Green, sleuth: Violet Strange. Mr. and Mrs. Saunders can’t sleep one night because Mr. and Mrs. Hammond, the neighbors, have a baby who won’t stop crying. They then hear a shot, after which all goes silent, scaring the Saunders and their neighbors. They summon a police officer and go to the Hammonds’ apartment, where the young mother says the baby has been in the bedroom with her husband. The men break down the bedroom door and find both father and baby dead. The coroner’s inquest declares Mr. Hammond’s death a suicide, lThus, Mrs. Hammond asks the help of Violet Strange, a young woman of high society, to prove it was murder.
“The Shoplifters” by Arthur B. Reeve, sleuth Constance Dunlap. Constance Dunlap is leaving a department store when a woman approaches her to say that the store detectives witnessed a woman stealing a diamond ring from Constance’s purse. She then meets Kitty Carr, who has taken the ring and a number of cheap items, saying she has been unable to help herself from stealing. In pity Constance offers to take over Kitty’s “parole,” taking over when Kitty is caught stealing again.
“The Murder at Troit’s Hill” by C.L Perkis, sleuth: Loveday Brooke. Miss Brooke takes a role as an amanuensis at an estate to look into the murder of a man and the ransacking of his home.
“The Man who Scared the Bank” by Valentine, sleuth: Daphne Wrayne. Daphne, a mere 20-year-old girl, is the face of The Adjusters, who recover stolen property. A bank manager comes to her because he has been swindled at the bank and wants the help of The Adjusters to get the bank’s money back.
“The Tea Leaf” by Edgar Jepson and Robert Eustace, sleuth: Ruth Kelstern. Willerton and Kelstern are both grouchy men who became friends for about a year, during which time Kelstern’s daughter got engaged to Willerton, but the engagement got broken off. The pair of men came to be enemies but still continue to meet at the Turkish bath every week, refusing to charge their schedules to avoid the other. One day at the bath, they have a fight in the hottest room, and Kelstern ends up stabbed. Willerton gets blamed and arrested, but no one can find the weapon. Ruth Kelstern feels that Willerton could not have killed her father, so she works to find the truth.
The Legendary Women Detectives was fun to listen to. I appreciated getting to hear stories about women detectives from 100 years or more ago, dispelling the common image of early detective fiction as being about all men. In fact, Anna Katherine Green, “the mother of detective fiction,” the author of our second short story, wrote her first novel, The Leavenworth Case, in 1878, just ten years after Wilkie Collins’s Moonstone, accepted as the first mystery novel. I learned from the introductions to these stories that women were actually common as detectives in the earliest days but later got eclipsed by men.
The stories in this collection are fascinating and creative. They are not all fun, but they all are of real interest, especially to anyone interested either in detection or women’s fiction. These stories led the way to different styles of mystery fiction. My two favorite detectives were Daphne Wrayne and Ruth Kelstern. Both show so much cleverness in their detection. Daphne shows a fun sense of humor and solves her problem with uniqueness and a touch of risk-taking. Ruth demonstrates ingenuity in using science to solve her problem. However, all the women use their wits in their own ways to solve the problems facing them. I appreciated the way the women are not held to traditional women’s roles despite being from the Victorian era, when gender roles especially were enforced in society in general.
Addison Barnes performs the audio version of this book. She kept things interesting, but she lacked some of the expression I am used to hearing. However, the stories do not build up the drama of contemporary mysteries, so it may be fitting for her to use a more even- toned manner. Barnes uses an American accent for some stories and a British accent for others, depending upon in which country they were written. In so doing, she gives a very believable performance.
I thoroughly appreciated getting to listen to the stories in The Legendary Women Detectives. I have listened to some of the Violet Strange stories, but the others were new to me. I was happy to get to meet Lady Molly, whose creation actually helped to lead the way to Scotland Yard’s opening up opportunities to women. Violet Strange shows that a young woman can be just as capable as an older man, indeed more capable, since she solved a mystery no men had been able to solve. I thought it interesting that Constance Dunlap uses psychology in her dealing with cases, a precursor to the methods of Hercule Poirot. I liked the angle used with Loveday Brooke, whose method of investigation is to go undercover where a mystery has taken place. As I previously stated, I especially liked Daphne Wrayne and Ruth Kelstern. I highly recommend this book to all readers and give it five stars!
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