AKA: Five pseudonymous female mystery authors.

M. C. Beaton. The lighthearted Beaton mysteries feature dour Scottish constable Hamish MacBeth (adapted for television) and the always-in-trouble Agatha Raisin (adapted for radio with Penelope Keith), but under Beaton's real name, Marion Chesney, other mysteries have appeared (such as the Edwardian-set Snobbery with Violence) as well as romance novels.

Italian ed. of David Frome's
The Hammersmith Murders

David Frome/Leslie Ford. Zenith Jones Brown began her mystery career with Murder of an Old Man (1929) under the pseudonym David Frome, followed by more than 15 Frome mysteries and more than 30 mysteries under the name Leslie Ford. Her sleuths include Mr. Pinkerton, Inspector Bull, Colonel Pickering, and Grace Latham. The bookstore Mystery Loves Company selected Ford's Girl from the Mimosa Club (1957) as one of the best mysteries of the 20th century.

Nina Foch in
My Name Is Julia Ross (1945),
based on Anthony Gilbert's
The Woman in Red (1943)

Anthony Gilbert. Lucy Beatrice Malleson, a relative of actor Miles Malleson (Kind Hearts and Coronets, etc.), wrote 32 books under the four pseudonyms of Anne Meredith, J. Kilmeny Keith, Sylvia Denys Hooke, and Lucy Egerton. However, vulgar lawyer Arthur Crook is the star of most of the 60 novels under Malleson's pen name of Anthony Gilbert. Crook debuted in Murder by Experts (1936); the final Gilbert book was A Nice Little Killing (1974). A Detection Club member, she was an Edgar nominee for "Door to a Different World" (EQMM Mar. 1970) and "Fifty Years After" (EQMM Mar. 1973).

Evelyn Piper. Merriam Modell, wife of a Cornell pharmacology professor, wrote stories for the New Yorker and the novel The Sound of Years (1946), but it was under the name Evelyn Piper that she published her most well-known work: Bunny Lake Is Missing (1957, film 1965). Other Piper books include the Edgar-nominated The Innocent (1949), the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone work The Motive (1950; called by the New York Times "a fine study in the detection not of who, but of why"), The Plot (1951), The Lady and Her Doctor (1956), Hanno's Doll (1961), The Naked Murderer (1962), The Nanny (1964, film 1965), and The Stand-In (1970).

Peter Vaughan in
Die! Die! My Darling
(1965), based on
Anne Blaisdell's Edgar-
nominated Nightmare

Dell Shannon. Illinois-born author Elizabeth Linington wrote under the pseudonyms Anne Blaisdell, Egan O'Neill, and Leslie Egan, as well as her own name; her police procedurals under the name Dell Shannon feature the LAPD's Luis Mendoza, including the Edgar-nominated novels Case Pending (1960) and Knave of Hearts (1962).

Ink in their blood: Five female mystery authors from the fourth estate.

• Edna Buchanan. Miami Herald journalist Buchanan received a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting in 1986 and discussed her coverage of crime in The Corpse Had a Familiar Face (1987) and Never Let Them See You Cry (1992). Her journalist-sleuth Britt Montero appears in Contents under Pressure (1992); the Edgar-nominated Miami, It's Murder (1994); Suitable for Framing (1995); Act of Betrayal (1996); Margin of Error (1997); Garden of Evil (1999); You Only Die Twice (2001); The Ice Maiden (2002); and Love Kills (2007).

• Carole Nelson Douglas. As a college senior, Douglas was a finalist in Vogue's Prix de Paris writing competition (along with future fellow mystery novelist Marcia Muller). She was a reporter and feature writer for the St. Paul (MN) Pioneer Press for more than 15 years and received several awards from the Newspaper Guild of the Twin Cities and a second-place award in newswriting from the Minnesota Associated Press. Today, Douglas has a busy mystery writing life, with her Irene Adler, Midnight Louie, and Delilah Street paranormal series.

• Gillian Linscott. Linscott was a journalist for the Liverpool Daily Post, the Birmingham Post, the Guardian, and the BBC for nearly 25 years. A versatile writer, she has penned historical mysteries featuring intrepid suffragist Nell Bray (such as the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger winner Absent Friends) and standalones such as The Garden. Today, she writes a mystery series set in the Victorian era under the pen name Caro Peacock.

• Eve K. Sandstrom. Inspired to pursue journalism by reporter-sleuth Beverly Gray, Sandstrom was a reporter and columnist at the Lawton (OK) Constitution for more than 25 years. She published several mysteries with Sam and Nicky Titus as well as reporter Nell Matthews, was an Agatha and Anthony nominee for her short story "Bugged" in Malice Domestic 5, and now features chocolatier Lee McKinney in her mysteries under the pen name JoAnna Carl.

• Celestine Sibley. A distinguished journalist with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for more than 50 years (she covered the James Earl Ray trial, among her other assignments), Sibley published her first mystery novel, The Malignant Heart, in 1957, followed by five others with journalist-sleuth Kate Mulcay: Ah, Sweet Mystery (1991); Straight as an Arrow (1992); Dire Happenings at Scratch Ankle (1993); A Plague of Kinfolks (1995); and Spider in the Sink (1997). She died in 1999 and was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2007. Edgar winner Phillip DePoy adapted her memoir, Turned Funny, into a play in 2006, and Sibley Fleming reflected on her grandmother's life in Celestine Sibley: A Granddaughter's Reminiscence (2000).

Five female mystery authors who can put a smile on your face.

"... In England I find it does not make one popular to kill people."—Georgette Heyer, The Unfinished Clue 141

• Joan Hess. I prefer Hess's Claire Malloy series (with Claire's dramatic daughter who always Speaks in Initial Capitals) to her Maggody novels, but few authors understand small-town weirdness better than Hess. (Also check out Hess's books under the pseudonym Joan Hadley)

• Georgette Heyer. Most critics declare that Heyer's romances are superior to her mysteries (perhaps because the latter were written with her husband), but her mysteries have much fun and ingenuity to offer. Winners include Behold, Here's Poison; Envious Casca (dubbed by Dean James as "the house party from hell"); The Unfinished Clue; and Why Shoot a Butler?. However, I found the solution to A Blunt Instrument to be unconvincing.

• Constance and Gwenyth Little.  A headless nurse in The Black Stocking. 'Nuff said.

• Charlotte MacLeod. When Sarah Kelling and Max Bittersohn showed up in Chinese disguise in The Family Vault and Professor Peter Shandy covered every inch of his house in tacky Christmas decorations to revenge himself on college colleagues in Rest You Merry, I realized I was in a different universe—and a very funny one.

Five female mystery authors who left us too soon.

• Dorothy Bowers. This Oxford graduate and Detection Club member penned four mystery novels featuring Chief Inspector Dan Pardoe (Postscript to Poison, Shadows Before, Deed without a Name,  and Fear and Miss Betony [called the best mystery of 1941 by the Times]. In 1948, Bowers died of tuberculosis at age 46.

• Sarah Caudwell. When she died of cancer in 2000 at age 60, this former barrister and Anthony winner left behind a slim but witty oeuvre for fans devoted to the legal cohorts of the gender-neutral professor Hilary Tamar (Thus Was Adonis Murdered, The Shortest Way to Hades, The Sirens Sang of Murder, The Sibyl in Her Grave, "Malice Among Friends" in Malice Domestic 6). Steven Heyman of Chicago-Kent Law School related in Mystery Scene how he used Caudwell's work in his law courses. She was a member of a colorfully leftist family (her father was Evelyn Waugh cousin Claud Cockburn, and her nieces include actress Olivia Wilde and journalist Laura Flanders).

• Kate Ross. This lawyer by day, author by night published four novels and two short stories with Regency-era dandy Julian Kestrel (Cut to the Quick, A Broken Vessel, Whom the Gods Love, the Agatha-winning Devil in Music, "The Lullaby Cheat" in Crime through Time, and "The Unkindest Cut" in Past Poisons). Judges complained about Ross's legal briefs because of her skill as a writer—they were "too interesting." Ross died of cancer in 1998 at age 41.

• Rebecca Rothenberg. This Agatha and Anthony nominee for The Bulrush Murders was a musician and epidemiologist, in addition to writing her series featuring microbiologist Claire Sharples (other books in the series include The Dandelion Murders, The Shy Tulip Murders, and The Tumbleweed Murders—the latter finished by Taffy Cannon). Rothenberg died in 1998 of a brain tumor at age 50.

• Barbara Burnett Smith. This Agatha nominee for Writers of the Purple Sage and Sisters in Crime past president followed her first novel with aspiring writer Jolie Wyatt with four others: Dust Devils of the Purple Sage, Celebration in Purple Sage, Mistletoe in Purple Sage, and Skeletons in Purple Sage. She also wrote the standalone Mauve & Murder and Bead on Trouble, which featured a sleuthing jewelry designer. She died in 2005 after she was hit by a car in San Antonio; she was 57.