As the great editor (he of last year's excellent The New Annotated Frankenstein) Leslie Klinger notes in his Introduction to In the Shadow of Agatha Christie: Classic Crime Fiction by Forgotten Female Writers, 1850-1917, Christie will always be considered “the Queen of Crime.” This kind of sobriquet naturally invites readers to search for predecessors – and naturally invites editors to assemble books like this one. Even half a century ago the exercise was in full swing with Hugh Greene's now-venerable The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes.