From Publishers Weekly
For yet another compilation of works by women authors, whose spirited female protagonists swell the ranks of mystery's mainstream these days, Manson (editor of Mystery for Christmas ) assembles 15 tales previously published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. The result is a mixed bag of the intriguing and the ho-hum. Ruth Rendell twists the ordinary until it becomes extraordinary in "A Pair of Yellow Lilies," in which a unmarried woman whose purse has been stolen is wined, dined and seduced by the good-looking man who returns her empty bag. In Mary Higgins Clark's "Stowaway," written in 1958, romance and suspense blend as a stewardess must decide whether to jeopardize her job and her pilot lover by concealing a defector. Series sleuths Kate Fansler (Amanda Cross), V.I. Warshawski (Sara Paretsky) and Jemima Shore (Antonia Fraser) solve knotty puzzles in their distinctive competent manners, while Anne Perry's Victorian ladies' maid, Digby, and butler, Ridgeway, star in a murder story set at a country house. A good starter volume for anyone who doesn't have many similar books on the shelf.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Fifteen stories reprinted from either Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine or Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, each written by a woman and featuring a woman heroine, who, all too frequently, is either rescued by a man--Patricia McGeer's kidnapping in Israel; Elizabeth A. Dalton's wife-beating husband; Dorothy Salisbury Davis's date from hell; Anne Perry's disruptive, 1894-set house- party--or perkily demanding to be taken as seriously as a man-- Janet Stockey's good-cop/bad-cop scenario; B.K. Stevens's novice p.i. Also included--with more interesting results--are Ruth Rendell, whose theft of a thief (``A Pair of Yellow Lilies'') appears in other anthologies; Antonia Fraser and Amanda Cross, with disappearing-woman cases for Jemima Shore and Kate Fansler; Faye Kellerman with the mystery of a discarded diamond ring for Detective Andrea Darling; Sara Paretsky with a stop-and-(literally) go murder for V.I. Warshawski; and Celia Fremlin with the best story here: a white lie turns into an inadvertent alibi that leads to thoughts of murder. Mostly one more attempt to cash in on the burgeoning women-in- mystery market and, considering the names involved, a surprisingly amateurish compilation. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
