The big book of female detectives

"Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler's new anthology brings together the most cunning, resourceful, and brilliant female sleuths in mystery fiction ... 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. Meet determined law-enforcing ladies and captivating criminal masterminds of all kinds, including a brilliant scientist who solves a murder using a single tea leaf ; a master thief who leaves a calling card at the scene of the crime lest the servants be wrongly accused ; a powerful woman who oversees a rogue band of vigilantes ; a nosy detective best known for her outrageous hats who solves a murder using tropical fish ; an X-rated sleuth who gets shanghaied by an unsavory character ; a puritanical villainess hell-bent on avenging a perceived wrong ; and, last but not least, a crime-solving nun who unravels a complicated poisoning plot" --