Women's wiles Book

Volume 1 of a set of 4 books. The choices of the works seem to be based on collecting stories that are almost too long to be considered short stories and too short or close to novellas. They also seem to prefer either golden age mysteries or ones of the 50's to 60's. So, why grab this? Many of these stories might have been printed and this was a way to bring back stories from complete oblivion.

On to the stories. The Toys of Death is a Mrs. Warrender story and I happened upon this earlier having read a book collecting all the short stories featuring her. Her son is a detective and she also has her own eyes open and solves things as well. This is one of the better shorts of this series.

The Calico Dog & The Book that Squealed are of an earlier era in terms of feel but are a bit shorter and are fun to read. Most of the detecting has to do with reading people, and paying attention to details. (Both of these I have not read before.)

The last one by Marcia Muller is the most contemporary of them and, this one deals more directly also with her getting guff for being a woman. She handles it well, and also has a really interesting way of handling people to get them to reveal themselves.

So, should you read this? 1. If you like mysteries of the golden age and those influenced by it yes. If you're looking for some mysteries you may not have come upon yes, these aren't common to find.