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Women Sleuths - Retired

The following have been "retired" from our popular Women Sleuths list because new titles are not being published in the series. Updates through May 2006.

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Nancy Bartholomew

Exotic dancer Sierra Lavotini is the most popular stripper at The Tiffany Club in Panama City, Florida. Her life is often complicated by enough relatives, friends, murder and mayhem to satisfy even the fans of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series.

• The Miracle Strip
• Drag Strip
• Film Strip

 

Edna Buchanan

Britt Montero is a reporter for the Miami Herald; she covers crimes on the blood-stained streets of Miami.

• Contents Under Pressure
• Miami, It's Murder
• Suitable for Framing
• Act of Betrayal
• Margin of Error
• Garden of Evil
• You Only Die Twice
• The Ice Maiden

 

Dorothy Cannell

Ellie Haskell, heiress and mother of twins, lives in England with her husband Ben, who she met through an escort service.

• The Thin Woman
• Widow's Club
• Mum's the Word
• Femmes Fatal
• How to Murder Your Mother-in-Law
• How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams
• The Spring Cleaning Murders
• The Trouble with Harriet
• Bridesmaids Revisited
• God Save the Queen
• The Importance of Being Ernestine

 

Charlotte Carter

Nanette Hayes is "young, tall, black, beautiful and defiantly bald." She's armed with attitude and a master's degree in French. She plays tenor sax on Manhattan street corners.

• Rhode Island Red
• Coq au Vin
• Drumsticks

 

Suzanne Chazin

Fire Marshal Georgia Skeehan of the New York Fire Department investigates arson and murder.

• Fourth Angel
• Flashover
• Fireplay

 

Margaret Chittenden

This San Francisco mystery series features 30-something, divorcee Charlie Plato and sexy television actor Zack Hunter.

• Dying to Sing
• Dead Men Don't Dance
• Dead Bead and Deadly
• Don't Forget to Die
• Dying to See You

 

Laura Crum

Laura Crum has been a regular competitor on the cutting and team-roping circuit, experience she has put to use in her mystery series featuring Gail McCarthy, a Santa Cruz horse veterinarian.

• Cutter
• Hoofprints
• Roughstodk
• Roped
• Slickrock
• Breakaway
• Hayburner
• Forged

 

Barbara D'Amato

A freelance magazine journalist based in Chicago, Catherine (Cat) Marsala has probed complexities of difficult issues before, but murders test all her intuitive skills.

• Hardball
• Hard Tack
• Hard Luck
• Hard Women
• Hard Case
• Hard Christmas
• Hard Bargain
• Hard Evidence
• Hard Road

 

Val Davis

Nicolette Scott, an archaeologist in the southwestern USA faces danger and adventure in this action-packed series.

• Track of the Scorpion
• Flight of the Serpent
• Wake of the Hornet
• Return of the Spanish Lady
• Thread of the Spider

 

Janet Dawson

Jeri Howard is an Oakland private eye who is a persistent and courageous investigator. The novels depict a richly detailed urban landscape.

• Kindred Crimes
• Till the Old Men Die
• Take a Number
• Don't Turn Your Back on the Ocean
• Nobody's Child
• Credible Threat
• Witness to Evil
• Where the Bodies Are Buried
• A Killing at the Track
• Scam and Eggs (short stories)

 

Dianne Day

Caroline Fremont Jones is the owner of a typewriting service in San Franciso at the turn of the century . Besides typing works for ten cents a page, she solves mysteries, and is also involved in the great fire.

• Strange Files of Freemont Jones
• Fire and Fog
• The Bohemian Murders
• Emperor Norton's Ghost
• Death Train to Boston
• Beacon Street Mourning

 

Joanne Dobson

English professor and literary sleuth Karen Pelletier teaches at Enfield College in Massachusetts.

• Quieter than Sleep
• The Northbury Papers
• The Raven and the Nightingale
• Cold and Pure and Very Dead
• The Maltese Manuscript

 

Eileen Dreyer

Molly Burke is a nurse and death investigator in St. Louis, Missouri who suffers from PTSD and battles demons both personally and professionally.

• Bad Medicine
• Head Game

 

Carolina Garcia-Aguilera

Private eye Lupe Solano is the daughter of a wealthy Cuban-American family. She's brash, smart and proud of her Cuban heritage.

• Bloody Waters
• Bloody Shame
• Bloody Secrets
• A Miracle in Paradise
• Havana Heat
• Bitter Sugar

 

C. L. Grace

Under this pseudonym, P.C. Doherty introduced medieval physician and apothecary Kathryn Swinbrooke who lives in Canterbury.

• A Shrine of Murders
• The Eye of God
• The Merchant of Death
• The Book of Shadows
• Saintly Murders
• A Maze of Murders
• Feast of Poisons

 

Gini Hartzmark

Though Katherine Prescott Milholland, a blue-blood Chicago attorney specializes in mergers and acquisitions, she often finds her cases lead to murder.

• Principal Defense
• Final Option
• Bitter Business
• Fatal Reaction
• Rough Trade
• Dead Certain

 

Susan Holtzer

Anneke Haagen is a divorced computer programmer who finds herself solving murders with the help of local cop, and former pro linebacker, Karl Genesco in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

• Something to Kill For
• Curly Smoke
• Bleeding Maize and Blue
• Black Diamond
• The Silly Season
• The Wedding Game
• Better Than Sex

 

Margaret Lawrence

Set in post Revolutionary War Maine, this series features widowed Hannah Trevor who works as a midwife.

• Hearts and Bones
• Blood Red Roses
• The Burning Bride
• The Iceweaver

 

Martha Lawrence

Dr. Elizabeth Chase is a parapsychologist/private investigator in San Diego.

• Murder in Scorpio
• The Cold Heart of Capricorn
• Aquarius Descending
• Pisces Rising
• Ashes of Aries

 

Virginia Lanier

Bloodhound trainer Jo-Beth Sidden is a chain-smoking, good old Georgia gal with a a special talent for search-and-rescue missions.

• Death in Bloodhound Red
• The House on Bloodhound Lane
• A Brace of Bloodhounds
• Blind Bloodhound Justice
• Ten Little Bloodhounds
• A Bloodhound to Die For

 

Wendi Lee

Angela Matelli is a good Italian girl from East Boston who joined the marines and became a private investigator when she got out.

• The Good Daughter
• Missing Eden
• Deadbeat
• He Who Dies
• Crazy Like a Fox

 

Sarah Lovett

Sante Fe forensic psychologist Dr. Sylvia Strange works on cases that others won't touch.

• Dangerous Attachments
• Acquired Motives
• A Desperate Silence
• Dante's Inferno
• Dark Alchemy

 

Allana Martin

Trading-post owner Texana Jones lives on the Mexican border in El Polvo, Texas, with her veterinarian husband Clay. These novels give the reader a very strong sense of a little known area of the U.S.

• Death of a Healing Woman
• Death of a Saint Maker
• Death of an Evangelista
• Death of a Mythmaker
• Death of the Last Villista
• Death of the River Master

 

Lise McClendon

Alix Thorssen is a "semi-prosperous art dealer, so-so kayaker, single girl, thirty-something" living in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

• The Bluejay Shaman
• Painted Truth
• Nordic Nights
• Blue Wolf

In her new series McClendon takes the reader to WWII era Kansas City and introduces loner, apprentice P.I. Dorie Lennox.

• One o'Clock Jump
• Sweet and Lowdown

 

Judy Mercer

The series opener features television newsmagazine producer Ariel Gold. When she wakes up bruised, bloodied and suffereing from amnesia, Ariel assumes the life of the woman whose identification she finds strewn around the house.

• Fast Forward
• Double Take
• Split Image
• Blind Spot

 

Skye Kathleen Moody

Venus Diamond is a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agent working in the Pacific Northwest. All the books focus on environmental and wildlife concerns.

• Rain Dance
• Blue Poppy
• Wildcrafters
• Habitat
• K Falls
• Medusa
• The Good Diamond

 

Barbara Neely

Blanche White is a feisty, feminist black domestic in North Carolina

• Blanche on the Lam
• Blanche Among the Talented Tenth
• Blanche Cleans Up
• Blanche Passes Go

 

Sister Carol Anne O'Marie

Sister Mary Helen, a feisty 75-year-old nun, hides her mystery novels behind her prayer book cover. Detecting appeals to Sister Mary Helen, and she instigates her own investigations.

• Novena for Murder
• Advent of Dying
• Missing Madonna
• Murder in Ordinary Time
• Murder Makes a Pilgrimage
• Death Goes on Retreat
• Death of an Angel
• Death Takes Up a Collection
• Requiem at the Refuge
• The Corporal Works of Murder

 

S.J. Rozan

Lydia Chin is a New York City Chinese American private eye, who partners with Bill Smith. The books are written alternately from either Lydia's or Bill's point of view.

• China Trade
• Concourse
• Mandarin Plaid
• No Colder Place
• A Bitter Feast
• Stone Quarry
• Reflecting the Sky
• Winter and Night

 

Jane Rubino

Cat Austen is a single mother, a cop's widow, and the only daughter in an Italian family of six brothers.

• Death of a DJ
• Fruitcake
• Cheat the Devil
• Plot Twist

 

Aileen Schumacher

Tory Travers is a young, widowed structural engineer living with her son on the edge of campus in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

• Engineered for Murder
• Framework for Death
• Affirmative Reaction
• Rosewood's Ashes

 

Mary-Ann Tirone Smith

Poppy Rice, an FBI agent and Crime Lab director investigator.

• Love Her Madly
• She's Not There
• She Smiled Sweetly

 

C.J. Songer

Meg Gillis is an ex-cop who runs a security business with fellow ex-cop Mike Johnson.

• Bait
• Line
• Hook

 

Michelle Spring

Cambridge private investigator Laura Principal first came to Cambridge to read history at Newnham College and stayed to do graduate research. She found a best friend, survived a failed marriage and forged a business and personal partnership with Sonny Mendlowitz.

• Every Breath You Take
• Running for Shelter
• Standing in the Shadows
• Nights in White Satin
• In the Midnight Hour

 

Judith Van Gieson

Neil Hamel is a hard-bitten Albuquerque, New Mexico lawyer with an uninhibited lifestyle. She is a game spirit and meets offbeat and intriguing characters.

• North of the Border
• Raptor
• The Other Side of Death
• The Wolf Path
• The Lies that Bind
• Parrot Blues
• Hotshots
• Ditch Rider
• Raptor

 

 

Charlene Weir

Small-town police chief Susan Wren has to adjust to having gone from being a detective in California to being the head of a the police dept. in Hampstead, Kansas.

• The Winter Widow
• Consider the Crows
• Family Practice
• Murder Takes Two
• Murder at the Movies
• A Cold Christmas
• Up in Smoke

 

Valerie Wilson Wesley

Tamara Hayle is a black ex-cop, struggling P.I., and single parent in Newark, New Jersey.

• When Death Comes Stealing
• Devil's Gonna Get Him
• Where Evil Sleeps
• No Hiding Place
• Easier to Kill

Barbara Wilson

Pam and Penny Nilsen, identical twins, have inherited Best Printing in Seattle after their parents' death, and now run it as a collective, printing counter-culture political posters, flyers and books.

• Murder in the Collective
• Sisters of the Road
• The Dog Collar Murders

Cassandra Reilly works as a Spanish translator operating in Europe.

• Gaudi Afternoon
• Trouble in Transylvania
• The Death of a Much-Travelled Woman (short stories)
• The Case of the Orphaned Bassoonists

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