The Four Queens of Crime: A Novel

"an ingenious plot . . . a brilliant debut . . ."

Rosanne Limoncelli is a filmmaker and writer who publishes her first novel to splashy effect in The Four Queens of Crime. Limoncelli presents a clever set-up, a fund-raising gala hosted by a lord at his manor in the lead up to WWII. To encourage attendance, the four most important mystery writers of the day are invited to help raise money for the Women's Voluntary Service.

"The plan was that the four top-selling mystery writers of the decade would act as hosts of the ball. Agatha knew she would have to put up with a noisy crowd of people, but she saw it as a chance to spend a weekend with Dorothy and to finally meet the other two—Ngaio Marsh, a New Zealander now living in London, and Margery Allingham, a decade younger than the rest of them, both writers she admired. It was a brilliant marketing ploy: Donate to the cause and meet the Queens of Crime."

Bringing Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham together for the same event allows the author to play the writers off of one another. Each approaches writing and mysteries differently, and each uses the gala event in her own way. Margery Allingham, the figure least familiar to an American audience, is thinking about her work as soon as she arrives at the manor hosting the weekend event.

"She knew there wouldn't be much time for writing this weekend, if any. She might be able to just scribble some notes. Proper pages would not be written till she got back home. But writing wasn't just about increasing the page count, it was thinking, and dreaming, and researching. Meeting new people this weekend would certainly feed her writer's soul."

It turns out much more than new faces will inspire Allingham and the other three writers. When the lord hosting the gala is murdered the morning after the fundraiser, the four queens of crime find themselves facing a real crime, not a story they've invented. It's an ingenious plot, and Limoncelli uses it to maximum effect.

Multiple suspects, motives, even state secrets all fuel the writers' thinking as they sift through clues, all too aware the murderer remains in their midst. Christie, like the others, is jolted by the shock of an actual murder.

"This was a serious situation and they were all right in the middle of it. She felt the danger in not handling it correctly. But what was the correct way to handle an actual murder?"

The Scotland Yard officers working the case are as interesting characters themselves. One of them, Lillian Wyles, is based on a real woman detective of that name, the first in the history of the Yard. The other, Richard Davidson, considers the crime writers as possible suspects themselves.

"I don't like it. It's too much of a coincidence that four crime writers are at the scene of a murder. . . . Very suspicious."

Limoncelli deftly weaves all these elements together—the detectives, the writers, and the people living in the manor, both family and staff who are all suspects. The writers are naturally thinking how the experience may be useful for a later book, how their characters would solve the crime, as they work to gather evidence pointing to the killer. The detectives are sifting through statements, evidence, and a growing picture of who the murdered man was. All of this is set firmly in the period of the late 1930s, as Hitler and his armies loom on the horizon. There are hints of espionage, of collusion with Nazis, along with the dramas of family fights.

Part mystery, part family drama, and all a lot of fun, The Four Queens of Crime is a brilliant debut, one that heralds more smart writing to come. As Agatha Christie notes:

"Everything in life is fodder for fiction—it would be a waste otherwise."