Atomic Renaissance

America in the 1950s was a place of Eisenhower, the Korean Conflict, McCarthy, and Sputnik. Women were trapped in the mold of Donna Reed and June Cleaver, marginalized by the hyper-masculinity of the age. Mystery fiction had become a male bastion, promoting hardboiled private eye novels and spy fiction. It would be another three decades before groups to promote equality between the sexes in mystery fiction appeared.

Yet seven women carved out a place in the genre during that post-World War I...