It is the late Victorian era and society is fascinated by - and worried about - that suspicious character known as the New Woman. She rides bicycles and drives those newfangled automobiles and doesn't like to be told what to do. In crime fiction as everywhere else, such women are breaking all the rules. Instead of attending tea parties and chatting about fashion, these pioneer women detectives are out shadowing suspects through London fog, crawling through secret passages, fingerprinting corpses - and sometimes committing a lesser cime in order to solve a murder. The first-ever anthology devoted strictly to the pioneer female characters in crime fiction, the direct ancestors of everyone from Miss. Marple to V I Warshawski, as well as the great female criminal masterminds. Smart, funny, and wildly adventurous tales of women who refused to sit politely in the parlor and chat about fashion.

About the Author
Michael Sims has edited two other collections for Penguin Classics: The Annotated Archy and Mehitable and Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Thief. His research for the latter inspired The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime. His most recent non-fiction book is Apollo's Fire: A Journey through the Extraordinary Wonders of an Ordinary Day, which National Public Radio chose as one of the Best Science Books of 2007. He is also the author of Adam's Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form, which was a New York Times Notable Book and a Library Journal Best Science Book; and Darwin's Orchestra: An Almanac of Nature in History and the Arts. His writing has appeared in New Statesman, Gourmet, Orion, the Washington Post, and many other periodicals in the United States and abroad. Learn more at www.michaelsimsbooks.com.


Book Information
ISBN 9780143106210
Author Michael Sims
Format Paperback
Page Count 352
Imprint Penguin Classics
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Weight(grams) 289g
Dimensions(mm) 197mm * 129mm * 20mm