Women authors of mystery novels

The world of crime fiction owes much of its success to the creations of female crime writers who took the genre solidified by Poe and Conan Doyle and expanded it.

Although we have always had stellar authors such as Raymond Chandler or Lee Child who excel at writing hardboiled tales of revenge, it seems crime fiction is increasingly a woman’s game.

So it probably makes sense to examine the works of distinguished female crime writers behind this domain.

What comes below is a list of some of the most notable female crime writers which have laid the foundation for the genre of crime, mystery, and suspense. Note that the following list is limited to the authors who remained actively writing in the last 50 years.

Also, as the goal has been to introduce you to the work of notable authors who are not necessarily household names, we have excluded authors such as Agatha Christie from the list.

Charlotte Jay

Geraldine Halls, better known