Crime is common ground for the twenty-one women writers in this extraordinary collection of contemporary mystery fiction. The voices here include professional crime solvers who take you from the mean streets of V.I Warshawski's Chicago in a case of music and murder... to the California freeway where Kinsey Millhone's beloved VW skids into a shooting...to the gang-held turf of Sharon McCone's San Francisco, where an eyewitness to a slaying says mum's the word.

And then there are mothers, grandmothers, battered wives, and social workers- ordinary women in extraordinary situations whose voices reveal contemporary life as seen through a woman's eye. From the opening tale of a girl down-and-out in London and what she steals from a corpse...to the final story of a summer vacation in the Berkshires, complete with romance and sudden death...this unique collection brings us great mystery writing that engages both our intellects and our hearts.

Includes stories from Liza Cody, Sue Grafton, Marcia Muller, Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Nancy Pickard, Amanda Cross, Faye Kellerman, Antonia Fraser, Julie SMith, Barbara Wilson, Susan Dunlap, Mary Wings, Marilyn Wallace, Gillian Slovo, Margaret Maron, Shelley SInger, Carolyn G. Hart, Carolyn Wheat, Maria Antonia Oliver, Sara Paretsky, and Dorothy B. Hughes.