Written in 1864, this novel set in London depicts Victorian women under a new light thanks to "the initiative in works of progress" of the times, that challenged what was considered not to be "a woman's work". In this novel the English police started employing women in their task force as undercover detectives. Here in the Victorian London we meet Mrs. Paschal, a widow in financial trouble, who "verging upon forty" reinvented herself and "became one of the much-dreaded, but little-known people called Female Detectives". Under cover she bravely chases thieves to secret vaults full of gold, spies on an Italian secret society, solves crimes and rescues the day.

In nineteenth-century London, middle-class women did not engage in what were seen as "unladylike activities." There were many jobs that a woman simply could not be expected to do because they were viewed as unsuitable for finer female sensibilities. The idea of a woman being involved in the murkiness of criminal detection must have seemed a radical and adventurous one in Victorian times: women simply did not do that sort of thing. And yet, in 1864, to the delight of men and women alike, two male authors published novels starring a female detective. William Stephens Hayward published Revelations of a Lady Detective just six months after Andrew Forrester's The Female Detective (republished by the British Library in 2012), making Hayward's the second novel ever published to feature a female detective. Hayward's heroine, Mrs. Paschal, is a very different character from her predecessor, Forrester's G. For a start, Mrs. Paschal is shown smoking on the front cover--an activity considered very modern and daring for women, even in the late nineteenth century. She is a widow, left close to financial ruin by the death of her husband, and supports herself through her detective work. This much racier female detective is however equally inventive, intuitive, and insightful, and with a Colt revolver in hand she works her way through a variety of cases involving theft, murder, and kidnapping. This very rare novel will be welcomed by all fans of Victorian crime fiction.

The Female Detective by Andrew Forrester is about a female detective who expertly evades suspicion while cracking the hardest cases. Excerpt: "Who am I? It can matter little who I am. It may be that I took to the trade, sufficiently comprehended in the title of this work without a word of it being read, because I had no other means of making a living; or it may be that for the work of detection I had a longing which I could not overcome."

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler's new anthology brings together the most cunning, resourceful, and brilliant female sleuths in mystery fiction. A Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original. For the first time ever, Otto Penzler gathers the most iconic women of the detective canon over the past 150 years, captivating and surprising readers in equal measure. The 74 handpicked stories in this collection introduce us to the most determined of gumshoe gals, from debutant detectives like Anna Katharine Green's Violet Strange to spinster sleuths like Mary Roberts Rinehart's Hilda Adams, from groundbreaking female cops like Baroness Orczy's Lady Molly to contemporary crime-fighting P.I.s like Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone, and include indelible tales from Agatha Christie, Carolyn Wells, Edgar Wallace, L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace, Sara Paretsky, Nevada Barr, Linda Barnes, Laura Lippman, and many more.

THE NO. 1 LADIES’ DETECTIVE AGENCY - Book 5 Fans around the world adore the best-selling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series and its proprietor, Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s premier lady detective. In this charming series, Mma Ramotswe—with help from her loyal associate, Grace Makutsi—navigates her cases and her personal life with wisdom, good humor, and the occasional cup of tea. Still engaged to the estimable Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, Mma Ramotswe understands that she should not put too much pressure on him, as he has other concerns, especially a hair-raising request from the ever persuasive Mma Potokwane, matron of the orphan farm. Besides Mma Ramotswe herself has weighty matters on her mind. She has been approached by a wealthy lady to check up on several suitors. Are these men interested in the lady or just her money? This may be a difficult case, but it's just the kind of problem Mma Ramotswe likes and she is, as we know, a very intuitive lady.

Source documents compiled by insurance investigator Ralph Henderson are used to build a case against Baron "R___", who is suspected of murdering his wife. The baron's wife died from drinking a bottle of acid, apparently while sleepwalking in her husband's private laboratory. Henderson's suspicions are raised when he learns that the baron recently had purchased five life insurance policies for his wife. As Henderson investigates the case, he discovers not one but three murders. Although the baron's guilt is clear to the reader even from the outset, how he did it remains a mystery. Eventually this is revealed, but how to catch him becomes the final challenge; he seems to have committed the perfect crime.

Kathleen Gregory Klein traces female paid, professional private investigators in British, Canadian, and American novels, revealing that the detective novel is both a reflection of and potential barrier to social change for women. This edition adds sixty new female private eyes to the roster and includes an afterword that assesses the current state of the genre's new and old novels. A comprehensive bibliography and a character list update the field through mid-1994.

“[An] ingeniously plotted novel . . . Norman knows how to weave an enticing and satisfying mystery, one tantalizing thread at a time.” — New York Times Book Review A witty, engrossing homage to noir, from National Book Award finalist Howard Norman Jacob Rigolet, soon-to-be former assistant to a wealthy art collector, looks up from his seat at an auction—his mother, former head librarian at the Halifax Free Library, is walking almost casually up the aisle. Before a stunned audience, she flings an open jar of ink at master photographer Robert Capa’s Death on a Leipzig Balcony. Jacob’s police detective fiancée is assigned to the ensuing interrogation. My Darling Detective delivers a fond nod to classic noir, as Jacob’s understanding of the man he has always assumed to be his father unravels against the darker truth of Robert Emil, a police officer suspected of murdering two Jewish residents during an upswing of anti-Semitism in 1945. The denouement, involving a dire shootout and an emergency delivery—it’s the second Rigolet to be born in the Halifax library in a three decades—is Howard Norman at his uncannily moving best. “Norman works with an offhand ease and grace . . . Whimsy is balanced by moments of powerfully evoked realism.” — Washington Post “An unconventional, lively literary mystery.” — Kirkus Reviews

Defending a young religious zealot who is being held in the infamous Bedlam hospital for the insane, Matthew Shardlake investigates a series of murders with disturbing ties to Lady Catherine Parr, a reform sympathizer and future wife of Henry VIII. 25,000 first printing.

""It's a big thing,"" said Loveday Brooke, addressing Ebenezer Dyer, chief of the well-known detective agency in Lynch Court, Fleet Street; ""Lady Cathrow has lost £30,000 worth of jewellery, if the newspaper accounts are to be trusted."" ""They are fairly accurate this time. The robbery differs in few respects from the usual run of country-house robberies. The time chosen, of course, was the dinner-hour, when the family and guests were at table and the servants not on duty were amusing themselves in their own quarters. The fact of its being Christmas Eve would also of necessity add to the business and consequent distraction of the household. The entry to the house, however, in this case was not effected in the usual manner by a ladder to the dressing-room window, but through the window of a room on the ground floor - a small room with one window and two doors, one of which opens into the hall, and the other into a passage that leads by the back stairs to the bedroom floor....""