Henry Heathcoate at his lavish mansion. As the night progresses, readers learn that Sir Henry is an arrogant, obnoxious jerk who is often cruel to his family members and various other guests at the ball. In other words, the perfect murder victim in a mystery by one of these authors.

Sure enough, Sir Henry is found dead in his library the next morning, the victim of his usual daily cigar laced with cyanide. In a nod to the presence of the notable authors, Scotland Yard assigns Lilian Wyles, the real-life first female Chief Inspector, to work with a male counterpart, Richard Davidson, on the case. Besides whodunit and why, Wyles and her partner must figure out how the killer could enter the locked library and replace Heathcoate’s entire box of ordinary cigars with the poisoned one. Naturally, the four queens are intrigued to find themselves in the middle of a real-life mystery and decide to do some snooping around of their own.

Author Rosanne Limoncelli has done her research on The Four Queens of Crime. The book contains considerable biographical material on the four famous writers. I’m familiar with Agatha Christie and, to a lesser extent, Dorothy Sayers, but the details about Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham were mainly new and highly informative. The author works in this material throughout the novel, rather than in ungainly information dumps. She also gives each writer a unique personality, and their behaviors seem credible. (She even adds some humorous moments, such as having Dorothy Sayers faint at the sight of the dead body.)

Despite what the book’s title and marketing might imply, the four queens aren’t the central characters in The Four Queens of Crime. The book isn’t a 1930s version of an episode of Murder, She Wrote with four Jessica Fletchers on the case. Instead, the four queens usually remain on the sidelines as Wyles and Davidson investigate. This investigation mainly involves questioning each witness separately about the events during the ball. That’s how actual police work is done, but it’s not a formula for a successful mystery. The individual recaps of the same handful of conversations don’t make for interesting reading. Especially when all the conversations reveal is what readers already knew: Heathcote was a jerk with many enemies. This portion of the novel could have been condensed considerably.

Limoncelli is a good writer, but not a particularly skilled mystery writer. She adopts the format of Golden Age mysteries, including a cast of characters at the beginning, and has Wyles reveal the killer at a dinner where all the suspects are present. However, several key pieces of information are revealed through characters carrying on conversations that other characters (usually one of the queens) overhear because they’re coincidentally hidden behind nearby furniture or curtains. Also, the last piece of evidence, which is practically a dead giveaway of the killer’s identity, is only revealed just before Wyles confronts them. That confrontation resembles a courtroom scene from “Perry Mason,” as Wyles breaks down the killer’s defenses and gets them to conveniently reveal all the details about how the murder was committed.

Much of The Four Queens of Crime reads like a novelization of Downton Abbey, as both Heathcote’s relatives and the household staff discuss the murder. (The murder takes less than one full day to solve.) I especially enjoyed the staff’s discussions about what happened, as they all insisted they had diligently done their jobs. (Which staff members were actually diligent is one of the novel’s plot points.) The author’s dialogue in these sequences seems authentic and realistic.

Writing a good mystery is difficult, which is one reason few authors have equaled the quartet of Christie, Sayers, Marsh, and Allingham in their day or the nearly 90 years since The Four Queens of Crime took place. Rosanne Limoncelli hasn’t mastered the craft yet, and her efforts to emulate these famous authors are at times frustrating and annoying. The author also strains too much to give each of the dozen suspects a unique motive for murder, resulting in several backstories that sometimes overwhelm the story. The multiple, poorly differentiated suspects caused me to consult the cast of characters more than once.

However, my frustrations were eventually overcome by the sheer enjoyment of the author’s audacious central concept. It was fun to see great writers come to life, discuss their personal problems, and get involved in the story. (Margery Allingham even gets clunked in the head by the killer as she investigates.) Also, there’s a dose of 21st-century feminism in the person of Lilian Wyles, a talented investigator who has a lot of sexism to overcome in her department and her partner. Add to that a good look at the uniquely British social structure of the era that successfully evoked some of the best of Downton Abbey, and the result is a success. Mystery purists may be perturbed at the puzzle’s flaws, but I enjoyed The Four Queens of Crime enough to recommend the novel.

NOTE: The publisher graciously provided me with a copy of this book through NetGalley. However, the decision to review the book and the contents of this review are entirely my own.