the queens of crime

Margery Allingham, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers & Ngaio Marsh

Just a few of the Queens’ many book covers  (images via Wikimedia Commons)

The Golden Age of Detective Fiction was also a golden age for women writers. 

Four in particular — Margery Allingham, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh and Dorothy L. Sayers — made their names as “the Queens of Crime.” Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, these authoresses wrote dozens of best-selling books, plays and magazine serials. They created beloved crime-solving characters, many of which became pop culture icons in their own right. And each pioneered the style now forever associated with the genre: one of secret passageways, murderous mysteries and mistaken identities.