Breakaway Books

Authored by Marie Benedict; Published February 2025; Mystery

⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️🏖️🏖️

I can’t say that The Queens of Crime was the most realistic or emotional mystery that I’ve read this year, but if you are a fan of classic female mystery writers, I’m confident you’ll like this one.

The Queens of Crime follows Dorothy Sayers as she persuades Agatha Christie to join forces with her and convince a club of male mystery authors to welcome several other prestigious women into their midst. The two of them, along with three other authors, decide to solve a real-life murder to prove their worth to the club and set off to solve the disappearance and murder of young May Daniels. As the group traipses back and forth between England and France, they realize that the risks of what they are doing is real after Dorothy is assaulted and threatened. Nevertheless, the Queens remain dedicated to solving the murder and bringing May justice. 

I found this mystery a little difficult to dig into. Just about everything about the set-up for the mystery felt too contrived for me, and it was a struggle to get through the opening pages. Even the period-specific language felt a little awkward and out of place, but that could be my sensibilities. Most of the awkwardness went away as the five ladies dived into the mystery, but it returned with the final confrontation with the murder suspects, who all came off as too villainous to be real. All of that said, once I decided to leave the plane of what was realistic and possible, the mystery, if not complex, was a fun read.

Of course, the true centerpiece of the novel is the relationship among the five women and the support they provided each other. (It may have been conveyed a bit heavy handedly, but that doesn’t make it any less true.) The five do not blend seamlessly together into a coherent unit but bring their own strengths to bear. It’s possible that the depiction of the ladies veers into stereotype, but it still is quite enjoyable to observe their interplay. Interspersed throughout the novel is talk of the cultural notion of “surplus women” which was apparently commonplace in that time. In essence, it seems as though the book is a rallying cry again this idea, and in modern times, I would argue that it is just as much a cry against tokenism. No, including a single woman in your club is not enough, because one woman cannot encompass all that womanhood experiences.

If you can cast aside the realism of this mystery, The Queens of Crime is a great way to at least pretend to spend some time with famous women writers.