A book that looks closely at ten of this country's most popular female practitioners of fictional mayhem - and no genre owes more to it's female writers. Women of Mystery goes behind the scenes to answer the questions that intrigue millions of mystery readers - exploring, in greater detail than any popular biographical collection available, the private lives and public works of the women who make murder a household word. The list of authors begins with the first published woman mystery novelist, spinster and lawyer Anna Green. Also covered are Agatha Christie, Mary Roberts Rhinehart, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, Josephine Tey, Patricia Highsmith, P.D.James and Ruth Rendell.