Another great Otto Pendleton’s collection! As with his previous “Big Books”, this book contains a treasure trove of stories by a wide variety of authors. The book offers a significant value for its content.

LOVED this book! I absolutely love crime fiction, and detective stories ever since I was a kid - so to read about female detectives through time was so much fun!!

The Big Book of Female Detectives is an encyclopedic anthology of detective fiction featuring female characters (and a fair number are actually written by women). Released 16th Oct 2018, by Knopf/Doubleday on their Vintage Crime/Black Lizard imprint it's a mind boggling 1136 pages and available in ebook and paperback formats.

Editor Otto Penzler has done another astounding job of collecting these stories together and providing insightful background and history as well as context. There are more than a dozen other 'Big Book' anthologies curated by Mr. Penzler, and this one really delivers.

The book's introduction is a capsule survey of the representations of women in detective fiction from the late 19th century to today. Penzler writes well and with deep knowledge of his subject. There is also a short introduction to each story which gives interesting background and some publishing history for each of the entries.

The stories themselves are a mixed bag (including some with female antagonists, or at least anti-heroes). They're arranged in sections grouped roughly into time periods starting with the Victorians and Edwardians, and continuing through Pre-WWI, the Pulps, Golden Age, Mid-Century, and the Modern Era.

This is a really worthwhile collection and is honestly valuable just for the historical information about the origins and development of detective fiction along with the comprehensive acknowledgements and publishing info at the end. Along with the stories, the reader has over a thousand pages of classic fiction from giants of the genre and from some lesser known authors past and present. I love these anthologies because I always manage to find some new-to-me authors to read further.

Five huge stars. This was a whopper of a book and really supremely enjoyable for readers of historical detective fiction.

An entertaining anthology full of types, ages, shapes and sizes of female detectives. A bumper feast for all murder mystery aficionados!

I dnf this book, it wasn't for me. The book felt slow and boring, I normally don't post DNF reviews but Netgalley no longer counts the books as a finish if you don't do review

I am going to go ahead and review this book even though I am no where near finished with it. This book is so thorough a collection of female detective stories, that I can't begin to finish it anytime soon. I will be purchasing my own paperback copy so that I can dip in and out of it for months to come. I love the information give at the beginning of each story that gives the history of the author and the featured detective. There are so, so many stories in this book that I am looking forward to enjoying long into the future.

What a fabulous collection for readers like me who cut their reading teeth on Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys and never quite got over their first book love - mysteries. An anthology full of short stories (74, but who's counting?) about female detectives, it spans multiple sub-genres and 150 years. Full disclosure here, I haven't read every story yet; I tend to read one or two between my other books. Some authors are familiar to me, some aren't. Some will be right up my alley, some won't be my cup of tea. But the formatting of the digital edition is wonderful, with a table of contents that's set up in different eras/genres, and links to each story. And there's an introduction to each story, with a bit of background information about the author, etc. This book makes me happy.

My thanks to Netgalley and Knopf/Doubleday for providing a copy for an unbiased review.

Epic Anthology of Female Sleuths
Well, he has done it again! This collection is a must for any mystery aficionado. There are 74 stories in this collection. They range from British Victorians and Edwardians, to pre WWI American, The Pulp Era, The Golden Age, Mid-Century, The Modern Era and just plain Bad Girls. While I have not yet read all of these stories, many I just re-read as they are favorites of mine, too. Each story is introduced with a nice bit on the history and significance of the piece. If I had gotten this book in physical form, it would be a permanent fixture on my nightstand. What a great book to add to any collection! This would make a wonderful gift for a mystery-loving mother on her special day! I received the ARC of this book for free and this is my honest review.

From the lesser-knowns of the Victorian era to today's standouts, this massive volume presents a thoroughly delightful collection of 74 stories which trace the arc of female detective fiction. These are the best of the best female sleuths: police, detectives, amateurs -- ranging from cozies to hardboiled. From Anna Katharine Greene to Agatha Christie to Anne Perry and many more -- it's a veritable feast! Some stories take a little longer to get through, while others are quick reads. Background material on each author and story increases the reader's enjoyment of the book. Not every story will be to every reader's taste, but that's one part of the beauty of this book -- skip ahead to the next, and perhaps later on revisit those omitted earlier. This is a book to immerse one's self in -- although it's not one to be read in one sitting, but savored over time, and returned to again and again.. It should be an indispensable entry into any mystery lover's personal collection!

I thoroughly enjoyed dipping in an out of this book and discovering new female detectives. It's almost a bit of a reference guide to who is who in the detecting world, this would make a brilliant gift to mystery fiction lovers and a great book to keep on the coffee table. Love it.

The most complete anthology of Female Detectives. The author selected the best stories from Victorian era to our modern times. Excellent choice for books collectors. A real pearl

#TheBigBookOfFemaleDetectives #NetGalley

I absolutely loved this book. This is a collection of stories about female detectives from stories in the victorian era to the modern one. If you love mysteries you will love this book. I highly recommend it.

I would like to thank netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book free of charge. This is my honest and unbiased opinion of it.

It was like following the history of women detectives in books. Some short stories were entertaining, some a little slow, but a nice variety. Found a few stories from favorite authors I hadn’t read before.
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It is holiday time and what could be more fun than sitting down by the roaring fireplace with a good mystery? First, you may want to "investigate" THE BIG BOOK OF FEMALE DETECTIVES edited by Otto Penzler. This weighty tome (yes, it is 1136 pages!) provides a selection of over seventy short stories from Victorian times to today. More recent authors (like Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton, Faye Kellerman, Carolyn G. Hart, Sara Paretsky, Nevada Barr, Lawrence Block, S.J. Rozan, Laura Lippman, Jeffery Deaver and more) and their characters will likely be familiar to mystery fans and, if not, this collection will provide a worthy introduction. If anything, this collection could be even longer. Like any "list," Penzler's selections are notable for what’s missing: Nancy Drew and Miss Marple. A fun gift for mystery readers!

Enjoyed reading these different stories. Thank you for allowing me to read these. I have met some new authors through this book.

Wow. This is a LOT of female detective stories all in one place. Divided mainly by date published, this book includes not only selected short stories but brief biographies of the authors as well. Not all of the authors are women but all of the main characters are. I say main characters advisedly because the last section is labeled "Bad Girls" (which, "girls", really? You couldn't call it Femme Fatales? or Wicked Women?) and includes characters who may not exactly be on the side of angels.
I rarely wish books were shorter but this would have been better served to be in a few volumes. It got long slogging through the stories. And it would have been more interesting with slightly longer biographies. Or biographies of the characters. These were all too brief.

This book was published October 16
Three stars
ARC kindly provided by NetGalley; Opinion is my own

Well now, that was a meal. Penzler does nothing halfway, and this meaty collection of 74 stories took me awhile to move through. I read most, but not all, and I’ll get to that in a minute. First, though, thanks go to Net Galley and Doubleday for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

The collection begins with Mrs. Paschal, published in 1864, who must find “the cleverest thieves in Christendom,” and it concludes with a piece by Joyce Carol Oates. The stories are broken down into sections, beginning with The Victorians and Edwardians, followed by Before World War I, The Pulp Era, The Golden Age, Mid-Century, and The Modern Era, and concluded with Bad Girls. Says Penzler in his introduction:

"Seeing the Evolution of the female detective’s style as it gathers strength and credibility through the decades is educational, but that is not the purpose of this book, or not the primary one, anyway. The writers whose work fills these pages are the best of their time, and their stories are among the high points of detective fiction that may be read with no greater agenda than the pure joy that derives from distinguished fiction."

And so the reader must absorb the hallmarks of the time period, and that means the earliest entries carry a certain number of stereotypes, primarily about the nature of women, but in the end, the detective is successful nevertheless. And it’s fun to see historical details written in present tense long ago, and so we know it’s getting to be late out when the lamplighters come out to start the gas lights in the hallways of the manse, for example. It’s also interesting to read authors that were the runaway sensations of their day, the ones that sold the most and wrote the most and were on the tongues of every mystery reader—and yet now they are completely obscure. We can never tell who will stand the test of time until it happens.

And now a confession. The first time I set out to read this tome, I read the entries in the first two sections and decided I would skip the portion devoted to pulp, which isn’t my personal favorite, and I would skip forward to read an entry by one of my favorite present-day mystery writers, and then go back again to cover the sections that come after the pulp section. That was my plan. I’m telling you this because the mistake I made here could happen to you, too, so here it is.

What I did was I skipped to the last section and began flipping through it, and then I was pissed, because I thought the best female detective writers of today had been left out, and in a huff, I abandoned the rest of the book and picked up something else. It wasn’t until I sat down to write a halfhearted review, in which I would explain what I read and what I skipped and why, that I reread the promotional teaser and realized I must have missed something. I went back to the galley, moved back to the second-to-last section that is clearly labeled “Modern”, and there they all were, and it is the longest, most inclusive section in the collection. That changed everything. So reader, if you go for this book, bear in mind that the sections are not completely linear. The “Bad Girls” section at the end, which didn’t do much for me but you may like it, is made up of stories about women criminals from a variety of different time periods. The most recent time period, the one bearing selections by Marcia Muller, Sara Paretsky, the late and beloved Sue Grafton, Nevada Barr, and a host of others, is second-to-last.

Once I realized my error, of course I returned to read the rest of the book.

The one sorrowful note here is that those of us that love these modern female detectives enough to have bought other anthologies, for example those brought to us by the Paretsky group, “Sisters in Crime,” will run across selections we have already read. I have seen both the Grafton and Paretsky stories already, although the piece by Barr, “Beneath the Lilacs,” is new to me. However, I see authors I haven’t read and will happily watch for now. The end of the mid-century section features “Mom Sings an Aria,” and although it veers a wee bit toward stereotypes, I can’t say I mind too much, because this writer makes me laugh out loud. James Yaffe is on my list now. “Blood Types”, by Julie Smith is likewise pithy, and “Miss Gibson,” by Linda Barnes also cracks me up. And I don’t know why I am still surprised by this. After reading so many anthologies, you’d think I’d realize that the greatest charms are had by finding brand new-to-me authors, but since it’s a good surprise every time, I may allow myself not to absorb the lesson; this way I can still be pleasantly surprised over and over again.

If you buy a holiday gift for a mystery lover, I recommend you get this book. If you try to buy something by your loved one’s favorite author, you may run up against it as I did: they’ve already read it. (And you probably hate returning things as much as I do.) But what are the chances she has this anthology? It’s over a thousand pages of detective fiction, and last I saw, it’s on sale for less than twenty bucks. There, that’s one gift chosen for you, and it’s not even November yet. You’re welcome.

This is another nice compilation of 74 short stories that editor Otto Penzler put together for mystery fans. I personally own few other collections from the series and I have always enjoyed the curated collections picked by the editor. I was excited to come across this ARC on Netgallery. I appreciate the generosity from the publisher for my early enjoyment prior to the official release.

"The Big Book of Female Detectives" is probably the most comprehensive collection of stories featuring females detectives and sleuths on the market. Readers are introduced to interesting cases written from the Victorian era to the recent time period (i.e. Anne Perry!) How interesting to see the revolution and development of the roles of females in the detective industry over the course of 100+ years. A nice contrast to the "typical" male sleuths who are usually intelligent and courageous, the females ones featured in this collection tend to exercise their brains by using different forms of methods more than being physical. Mind you, though, they are no less fearless than their male counterparts; sometimes they are in fact more creative to solve the cases in their own special ways!.

The collection includes stories written by many influential authors in the mystery genre as well as some less renown ones. All of the stories are short with exception to one - "The Secret Adversary" by Agatha Christie. This one full-length story alone already makes this "big book" a worthy purchase.

And the cover is so nice to look at. For some reason, I keep feeling the cover is so festive! I am writing this review with an actual copy on my desk and I can only say the actual book makes such a nice addition to my personal library, both the rich content and the aesthetic cover art.. Any mystery lover should check this wonderful book out. I highly recommend.

This book contains 74 short stories featuring women detectives. It covers 150 years of writings by some famous and some-not-so famous authors. If you’re a mystery reader, you’ll recognize many if not all the modern authors. What is particularly fascinating is reading the stories from the early days to present day to see how the idea of the woman detective has evolved over the years. You also get to read how the writing evolved over that same period. At 1136 pages, it is not a book you can or should read in one setting. It deserves to be savored, one story at a time..

OK – I am going to say something which is no surprise to most of us – Agatha Christie was truly the most amazing mystery author.

This book is wonderful.

We start out with female detectives from about one hundred years in the past. The writers are mostly men. But, there are also women authors who show how talented they were. The writing is not what one would expect from an author today. Situations and attitudes are somewhat dated. But, each story is well written and the mysteries hold the reader's interest.

The stories proceed toward more modern times. The reader moves forward through changing attitudes toward the female sleuths.

Mr Penzler went to a great deal of time and effort to find absolutely wonderful stories.

As much as I enjoyed each of the stories, I was still amazed at the fact that Ms Christie introduced a completely new level of writing and plot development.

Any reader who is a fan of mysteries, should really read this book.

The plots are varied, the characters are well developed and every author has shown the quality of their abilities.

I am grateful that I have had the opportunity to enjoy so many authors, so many stories and such terrific feminine investigators.

I received this book from the publisher through NetGalley. I am voluntarily writing this review and all opinions are completely my own.