The Real Lolita author Sarah Wienman presents a landmark collection
of 4 brilliant novels by the female pioneers of crime fiction--women who
paved the way for Gillian Flynn, Tana French, and Lisa Scottoline
Though women crime and suspense writers dominate today's bestseller
lists, the extraordinary work of the mid-century pioneers of the genre
is largely unknown. Turning in many cases from the mean streets of the
hardboiled school to explore the anxieties and terrors lurking in
everyday life, these groundbreaking novelists found the roots of fear
and violence in a quiet suburban neighborhood, on a college campus, or
in a comfortable midtown hotel. Their work, influential in its day and
still vibrant and extraordinarily riveting today, is long overdue for
rediscovery.
This volume, the second of a two-volume collector's set, gathers four
classic works that together reveal the vital and unacknowledged lineage
to today's leading crime writers. From the 1950s here are Charlotte
Armstrong's Mischief, the nightmarish drama of a child entrusted to
a psychotic babysitter, Patricia Highsmith's The Blunderer,
brilliantly tracking the perverse parallel lives of two men driven
toward murder, Margaret Millar's Beast in View, a relentless study
in madness, and Dolores Hitchens's Fools' Gold, a hard-edged tale
of robbery and redemption.
LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization
founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by
publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most
significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than
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