The Queens of Crime

October 1, 2024

Bestselling Benedict (The Mitford Affair) sets her newest in 1930s London, as five women crime writers form a secret society to claim their position in the world. The club includes Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, and Baroness Emma Orczy. To prove their point, they plan to solve a real locked-room murder. With a 250K-copy first printing. Prepub Alert.

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December 2, 2024
Benedict follows The Mystery of Mrs. Christie with a shrewd speculative whodunit that imagines Agatha Christie’s peers joining her to investigate a murder in 1931 London. Crime writer Dorothy Sayers has just founded the Detection Club, “the preeminent organization of mystery writers” in England. After successfully recruiting Christie, Sayers becomes determined to add more female crime writers to the club’s ranks, and eventually enlists Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, and Baroness Emma Orczy. Once that cohort, who call themselves the “Queens of Crime,” swear on a skull to play fair with their readers, Sayers suggests they get their male colleagues to treat them with respect by solving a real murder. The group then crosses the Channel to probe the case of May Daniels, an English nurse who vanished in France seven months earlier, and whose corpse just turned up near the site of her disappearance. Benedict easily brings each of her five distinct writer/sleuths to life, and honors their literary legacies by providing plenty of ingenious, fair-play clues to help careful readers follow along and solve the central mystery. This is a treat for fans of golden age whodunits. Agent: Laura Dail, Laura Dail Literary.

Starred review from January 1, 2025
The Detection Club is comprised of male detective writers in 1930s London, until its ranks are altered by noted authors Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie, who then propose adding fellow writers Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, and Emma Orczy to the roster. Coldly welcomed with unopened arms, the women plot to win their male colleagues' approval. Dubbing themselves the Queens of Crime, with Sayers as their ringleader, they are determined to demonstrate their bona fides by solving an actual murder, using the techniques their fictional protagonists honed through countless popular novels. The death of a young nurse, May Daniels, in a French village captures their attention, and the five authors fan out across two countries, discerning clues, investigating leads, and interrogating witnesses the police and media ignored in their zeal to demean Daniels as a drug-addled wastrel. Sensitive to how the mystery genre was considered a poor stepchild to literary fiction, Sayers and company are motivated to salvage their own reputations as well as Daniels'. Mystery fans may know the classic novels by the real queens of crime; now, thanks to historical-fiction star Benedict's cleverly realized portraits of women committed to friendship and feminism, readers will know the wise, empathetic, and resourceful people who wrote them.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Benedict is always a draw, and her latest will also attract fans of the classic crime writers she vividly portrays in this historical mystery and homage.

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January 15, 2025
Five real-life luminaries from the Golden Age of detective fiction team up to solve a murder. Five months after nurse May Daniels disappeared during a day trip in October 1930 from a railway station near Boulogne-Sur-Mer, a farmer finds her bloody body strangled to death. The French police, unconcerned about the damage they're doing to the victim and her family, announce on scant evidence that May--whose companion, nurse Celia McCarthy, last saw her entering a ladies' room she never emerged from--was a drug addict who deserves few tears. By that point, the title quintet--Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Baroness Emma Orczy, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham--have already sprung into action. Their original motive for traveling to France, proving themselves the equals of G.K. Chesterton and the rest of their condescending male counterparts in the newly formed Detection Club, has morphed into a deep sense of connection to the dead nurse and "an urgent quest to do right." Working mostly with the reticent, brainy Christie, Sayers, who serves as narrator, methodically retraces May's last movements and works backward to figure out what she was doing before she and Celia embarked on their trip. Their most promising leads implicate Louis Williams, the son of Mathers Insurance founder Jimmy Williams, as May's benefactor, beau, and killer. But no reader who's spent time with any of these writers' own books will believe that the actual solution will be as simple as that. A routine whodunit enlivened by the byplay among the author sleuths and their determination to stand up to the patriarchy.

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