Kathleen Gregory Klein

Divorced after twenty-three years, garden designer Liz Clarke returns to Greenwich, Connecticut expecting to find the haven of her childhood. Her nostalgic memories are interrupted when her pregnant goddaughter discovers the bloody body of the garden tour chairwoman and hysterically calls Liz rather than 911. She shifts her focus from dirt to detecting to save Melissa from suspicion. The kitchen garden she designed for the annual tour gives Liz access to the world in which the social-climbing victim Staci Hooper made enemies. With help from her Irish lover and country music fan Sean Healey, Liz digs into motives and alibis. Was Lawrence Hooper planning to replace his current trophy wife with an even younger version-the cross-country rider, Deb Norcross? Or did his lover's sister Jean whom Staci displaced in the garden club want revenge? Maybe Staci's own lover Franco Rizoldi needed to quiet her in order to safeguard his marriage. The killer continues his deadly attacks, terrifying those Liz needs to protect, and she vows to root out the evil invading her garden. When waiting for the police to find the murderer feels slower than watching grass grow, Liz sifts through the clues and uncovers a very nasty snake in the garden indeed-one that will kill again if necessary. Kathleen Gregory Klein gardens on five acres on the Ware River in Gloucester, Virginia.

The Deadly Garden Tour

"This volume explores the range of relationships among women writers, women detectives and women-centered mystery fiction, and women readers. Focusing on writers as diverse as Sara Paretsky, Joan Hess, Sarah Caudwell, P.D. James, Katherine V. Forrest, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Sue Grafton, D.R. Meredith, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Barbara Wilson, the authors analyze the development of detective fiction with a different agenda: the woman-authored woman detective. Examined through the eyes of actual and hypothetical women readers of the genre, these eleven essays concentrate new attention on the trio of reader, writer, and text when all three are modified by the terms "woman" and "mystery." The first essay collection to propose this gender and genre specific analysis, Women Times Three offers its readers a careful theoretical and critical investigation of both historical and contemporary models of consistently "new" mystery fiction." "The essays' authors are not only widely published scholar-critics of mystery/detective fiction but also dedicated fans of the genre. Familiar with the full scope of mystery fiction, they bring insight and enthusiasm to their writing."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Writers, Detectives, Readers

Women Times Three

Recounts the lives and summarizes and evaluates the works of 117 classic and contemporary women mystery writers

Classic to Contemporary

Great Women Mystery Writers

The essays' authors are not only widely published scholar-critics of mystery/detective fiction but also dedicated fans of the genre. Familiar with the full scope of mystery fiction, they bring insight and enthusiasm to their writing.

Jay P. Pederson

Taryn Benbow-Pfalzgraf

Provides information on the most influential English-language writers of the crime and mystery genre. Each entry includes author biographies; complete bibliographies; lists of critical studies; locations of manuscripts; the writer's own comments on his or her work, when available; and an essay written by an expert of the genre.

St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers

The distinguishing characteristic of the book is its mix of essays focusing on teaching cultural diversity in the classroom and illustrating diversity through fiction to the general readers."--BOOK JACKET.

Diversity and Detective Fiction

Kathleen Gregory Klein traces female paid, professional private investigators in British, Canadian, and American novels, revealing that the detective novel is both a reflection of and potential barrier to social change for women. This edition adds sixty new female private eyes to the roster and includes an afterword that assesses the current state of the genre's new and old novels. A comprehensive bibliography and a character list update the field through mid-1994.

Kathleen Gregory Klein

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