Meet some fascinating females:

• Jennie Baxer, 1890s journalist and world traveller
• Nelvana of the Northern Lights, created for comic book-starved Canadians during the Second World War
• the 60s’ Eve Adam, the "Rock Hit of Prague," whose methods violate all the "rules" for detective books
• and, very much of the 1990s, vampire detective Vicki Nelson, whose beat is Toronto’s Queen Street West

As well as the fifteen investigating women in the book, Skene-Melvin’s introduction describes hundreds of female sleuths and their creators in an in-depth analysis of women detective fiction by Canadians.

You will recognize many of the writers included in Investigating Women: Grant Allen, Robert Barr, Marisa De Franceschi, Adrian Dingle, Katherine V. Forrest, Hulbert Footner, Maurice Gagnon, Margaret Haffner, Joan Hall Hovey, Tanya Huff, Medora Sale, Josef Skvorecky, and Betsy Struthers.

For each of the selections a brief note sets the story; bibliographies help readers find other books by the authors featured in Investigating Women.

David Skene-Melvin has edited Crime in a Cold Climate (1994); Investigating Women: Female Detectives by Canadian Writers (1995); Bloody York: Tales of Mayhem, Murder, and Mystery in Toronto Past, Present, and Future (1996); and Secret Tales of the Arctic Trails: Stories of Crime and Adventure in Canada's Far North (1997) He is also the compiler, assisted by Norbert Spehner, of Canadian Crime Fiction 1817-1996: An Annotated Comprehensive Bibliography and Biographical Dictionary of Canadian Crime Writers (1996), covering both English and French-Canadian crime fiction, as well as co-compiler, with his wife Ann, of Crime, Detective, Espionage, Mystery, and Thriller Fiction & Film: A Comprehensive Bibliography of Critical Writing Through 1979 (1980). In addition, he has written numerous articles on and reviews of Canadian crime writing.

David Skene-Melvin's profile page