ARC Review: The Queens of Crime by Marie Benedict

The Queens of Crime
Author: Marie Benedict
Publication: St. Martin's Press (February 11, 2025)

Description: From the New York Times bestselling author of The Mystery of Mrs. Christie―a thrilling story of the five greatest women writers of the Golden Age of Mystery and their bid to solve a real-life murder.

London, 1930. The five greatest women crime writers have banded together to form a secret society with a single goal: to show they are no longer willing to be treated as second class citizens by their male counterparts in the legendary Detection Club. Led by the formidable Dorothy L. Sayers, the group includes Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Baroness Emma Orczy. They call themselves the Queens of Crime. Their plan? Solve an actual murder, that of a young woman found strangled in a park in France who may have connections leading to the highest levels of the British establishment.

May Daniels, a young English nurse on an excursion to France with her friend, seemed to vanish into thin air as they prepared to board a ferry home. Months later, her body is found in the nearby woods. The murder has all the hallmarks of a locked room mystery for which these authors are famous: how did her killer manage to sneak her body out of a crowded train station without anyone noticing? If, as the police believe, the cause of death is manual strangulation, why is there is an extraordinary amount of blood at the crime scene? What is the meaning of a heartbreaking secret letter seeming to implicate an unnamed paramour? Determined to solve the highly publicized murder, the Queens of Crime embark on their own investigation, discovering they’re stronger together. But soon the killer targets Dorothy Sayers herself, threatening to expose a dark secret in her past that she would do anything to keep hidden.

Inspired by a true story in Sayers’ own life, New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict brings to life the lengths to which five talented women writers will go to be taken seriously in the male-dominated world of letters as they unpuzzle a mystery torn from the pages of their own novels.

My Thoughts: THE QUEENS OF CRIME was an interesting piece of historical fiction. It is 1930 and Dorothy Sayers comes up with the idea of forming the Detection Club. Its purpose is to provide a venue where the authors of detective fiction can come together. 

Dorothy comes to feel that the club is being hijacked by male authors. So, she recruits some of the leading female lights of the day. First on her list is Agatha Christie who is past the time of her unexplained disappearance and is remarried to Max Mallowan. She also invites Baroness Emma Orczy, Margery Allingham, and Ngaio Marsh. She surprises the membership when she invites the other ladies to join.

Then come the suspicious death of May Daniels, a trainee nurse in England, who disappears in Boulogne and whose body is discovered some months later. Dorothy's husband is a newspaper writer assigned to the May Daniels case. 

Dorothy and the other self-styled Queens of Crime go along to see if they can solve the locked room mystery. After all, May disappeared from a train station restroom and didn't reappear until her body was discovered. The women decide if they ever want to be respected by their male colleagues, they will have to discover what happened to May whose reputation has been thoroughly trashed by the horde of newspaper men covering the story. 

Their investigations help these five very different women get to know each other and also solve the murder of May Daniels. 

The story was entertaining. I enjoyed that it was told through Dorothy Sayers' viewpoint. It painted an interesting picture of women and women writers during the early 1930s as they dealt with male prejudice.

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.