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Mystery Women: An Encyclopedia of Leading Women Characters in Mystery Fiction Volume III (1990-1999) Part 1: A-L, & Part 2: M-Z & Index. TWO VOUME SET
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About Mystery Women: An Encyclopedia Of Leading Women
Product Description Mystery Women, Volume 3, is the most recent in a series about the changing roles of women in the mystery novel. Volume 3 contains more than 580 series with female sleuths who were introduced during the years 1990-1999. This is an astounding number, barely falling short of the total identified in the first two volumes, which covered one hundred years. Increasingly, the mystery novel explores major issues of interest to women, considering both the positive and negative impact of changes in status. Volume 3 covers female sleuths from more than a dozen countries, of assorted ages, education and employment, religious beliefs and political ideologies, states of life and historical periods. The authors include both men and women. The focus is on the protagonist, not the writer. The biographies of the women are based on personal reviews of the books in which they appeared. In order to be included in the survey, a character must have made a substantial appearance in at least two books published between January 1, 1990 and December 31, 2001. Volume 2 in the "Mystery Women" series was nominated for an Agatha Award for non-fiction published in 2002. From Booklist Barnett started collecting novels featuring female detectives in 1975, and an early result was the publication in 1997 of Mystery Women: An Encyclopedia of Leading Women Characters in Mystery Fiction, which covered the years 1860-1979. That volume was revised in 2001, and quickly followed by Mystery Women, volume 2, extending coverage through the 1980s. Volume 3 (which is actually spread over two volumes) covers 1990-1999. Together, the volumes treat almost 1,300 women. Selection is based upon number of significant appearances, and not all of the women who are included are heroines or even detectives. The expected names such as Jane Marple and V. I. Warshawski are here, but Barnett also includes Spenser's girlfriend, Susan Silverman, and Lord Peter Wimsey's eventual wife, Harriet Vane. Arrangement is alphabetical by character name, and each entry includes author name and a readable character biography. Entries are followed by an author and character index, a cumulative character index, a title index, and a chronology of years in which the characters made their first appearances (1860-1999). The chronology is a useful finding aid, since characters are assigned to a volume depending on the year in which they first appeared in print. Also helpful is the "Author/Character Master List" in volume 3. Public libraries can add this work to their collections as both a collection-development and a readers'-advisory tool for mystery-loving patrons. REVWRCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Review Colleen Barnett's ambitious series, Mystery Women: An Encyclopedia of Leading Women Characters in Mystery Fiction now spans three volumes: Volume 1 (1860-1979) Revised (Poisoned Pen Press, 383 pages, $16.95), Volume 2 (1980-1989) (397 pages, $16.95), and Volume 3 (1990-1999) (868 pages, $33.95). It's a mammoth undertaking which catalogs well over a thousand mystery series featuring women protagonists by both men and women writers, although most of the writers examined are women. The entries are heavily annotated, providing a wealth of plot and character information on all books in a given series (but none other than pseudonyms on the authors), and are arranged by characters' names and cross-indexed by author, title, and year the first book in the series was published. There is a minimum of critical commentary in the individual entries and no attempt to rank any of the series by importance, literary merit, or historical significance and we're not certain whether this is a strength or weakness, given the literal-mindedness the author exhibits in her introductions to the individual volumes. Even so, this is a valuable reference work that any serious reader of the genre should own. --Denver Post From the Author After 27 years of researchi
