The Ladies' Killing Circle: A Crime and Mystery Collection

Lori McLeod is a librarian with the Toronto Public Library.

“Some ladies gather to knit or quilt. The ladies gathered here plot
the murders of horrible, nasty people. Only on paper, of course ...
pity.” The result of this unusual pastime is an entertaining
collection of short stories and poems written by a diverse group of
women whose membership includes professional writers, journalists, an
artist, and a child psychologist.

The first story, “This Little Killer Went to Market,” is a strong
opener. A devoted wife discovers that her husband has been having an
affair and plots his murder. The final sentence in this story by Audrey
Jessup winds up the tale in a truly startling fashion. Another fine
story involves a man who goes to the police to confess a crime—the
murder of his wife 25 years earlier.

Some of the stories give the reader an insider’s view of the world
with which the writer is well familiar. Marguerite McDonald, a
journalist with the CBC, sets her crime in a busy Ottawa newsroom.
Barbara Fradkin, a child psychologist, contributes a poignant story in
which a social worker with the Children’s Aid Society is called to a
home to deal with a traumatized child whose parents have been found dead
in what appears to be a murder–suicide. As a librarian, I particularly
enjoyed Victoria Cameron’s “The Dewey Decimal Murder,” in which a
rather nasty library patron is found murdered near a book-return box.

Some of the stories are perhaps not as strongly plotted as others, but
overall this is a very satisfying collection of short crime fiction.