book cover of The Queens of Crime
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The Queens of Crime

(2025)
A novel by

 
 
USA TODAY BESTSELLER
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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.


Genre: Historical Mystery

Praise for this book

"I was riveted by this quintet of mystery writers... Smart, biting, and a tribute to female friendship and loyalty. An absolute delight!" - Fiona Davis

"Faithful to history and at the same time wonderfully inventive, The Queens of Crime is a brilliant, irresistible, and page-turning delight, as well as a rallying cry for what women can accomplish when we stick together. If I always had a new book by Marie Benedict, I would do nothing but read sixteen hours a day." - Nina de Gramont

"Marie Benedict takes her formidable talents to a new level in The Queens of Crime... Breathtaking suspense and female friendship make for a heady combination in this wonder of a book, which will have fans of both historical fiction and thrillers torn between racing through the pages and wanting to savor every word." - Pam Jenoff

"Full of Benedict's richly textured language, complex moral questions and delicious historic detail, The Queens of Crime reads with the urgency of a mystery and the charm of a captivating, character-driven narrative -this is one to savor." - Allison Pataki

"I loved Marie Benedict's stellar The Queens of Crime....[it] will move you with its themes of female friendship and equal justice, which resonate so powerfully even today." - Lisa Scottoline


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