Crime is common ground for the twenty-one women writers in this extraordinary collection of contemporary mystery fiction. The voices here include professional crime solvers who take you from the mean streets of V.I Warshawski's Chicago in a case of music and murdera?| to the California freeway where Kinsey Millhone's beloved VW skids into a shootinga?|to the gang-held turf of Sharon McCone's San Francisco, where an eyewitness to a slaying says mum's the word. And then there are mothers, grandmothers, battered wives, and social workers- ordinary women in extraordinary situations whose voices reveal contemporary life as seen through a woman's eye. From the opening tale of a girl down-and-out in London and what she steals from a corpsea?|to the final story of a summer vacation in the Berkshires, complete with romance and sudden deatha?|this unique collection brings us great mystery writing that engages both our intellects and our hearts.