Lady Molly of Scotland Yard

Mystery readers and lovers of detective fiction are in for a real treat with the twelve intersected stories featuring the ace sleuth Lady Molly of Scotland Yard. Head of the female department at that redoubtable institution in 1910, Lady Molly invariably becomes the police chief's secret weapon and method-of-last resort when confronted with seemingly unsolvable crimes. The stories are narrated by Lady Molly's devoted assistant Mary Granard, a latter-day Dr. Watson, and they offer a fascinating look into the culture of London at the turn of the previous century. Lady Molly is one of the first mystery stories to feature a crack female detective, and she has been described as a valuable precursor to such modern-day detectives as V.I. Warshawski and Kinsey Millhone. Relying on brains rather than brawn, her incredibly capable female intuition allows her to catch clues that her fellows at the Yard, "the blundering and sterner sex," miss wholesale. Lady Molly also employs an admirable any-means-necessary approach to police detection, and she is not afraid to take spectacular chances in these wildly entertaining and erudite mystery stories. She can hold her own fight, as displayed in the story "The Irish Tweed Coat," and Lady Molly forever stays one step ahead of the miscreants. And she invariably gets her man, so to speak. Baroness Orczy (1865-1947), a well-known British novelist and playwright, was famous for her series of novels featuring the scarlet Pimpernel. a first-rate author of detective fiction, Orczy was a prolific author of novels, plays, short stories, and translations from her native Hungarian.