This book traces the rise and development of a tradition of detective fiction by women in the period between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War II. Its subject may come as a surprise to those who have long associated American detective fiction with the expression and dissemination of a hard-boiled style of masculinity. In fact, several women were highly successful authors of detective novels in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; their books sold briskly and the authors achieved a certain level of literary celebrity in their day.

-- from the Preface