Although the mystery novel has been popular with women readers since the 19th century, until the late 1970s, fictional women detectives typically were portrayed as stereotypic and passive, and often overlooked by critics. Over the last two decades, however, women mystery writers have begun creating a new type of hero: the modern female detective-an independent, intelligent, witty, and compassionate woman who can take care of herself. This volume analyzes the new female serial detectives and highlights their struggles with femininity and feminism in the everyday and the way they have profoundly altered the genre's standard plotting and characterization.