Stowaway

For yet another compilation of works by women authors, whose spirited female protagonists swell the ranks of mystery's mainstream these days, Manson (editor of Mystery for Christmas ) assembles 15 tales previously published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. The result is a mixed bag of the intriguing and the ho-hum. Ruth Rendell twists the ordinary until it becomes extraordinary in ``A Pair of Yellow Lilies,'' in which a unmarried woman whose purse has been stolen is wined, dined and seduced by the good-looking man who returns her empty bag. In Mary Higgins Clark's ``Stowaway,'' written in 1958, romance and suspense blend as a stewardess must decide whether to jeopardize her job and her pilot lover by concealing a defector. Series sleuths Kate Fansler (Amanda Cross), V.I. Warshawski (Sara Paretsky) and Jemima Shore (Antonia Fraser) solve knotty puzzles in their distinctive competent manners, while Anne Perry's Victorian ladies' maid, Digby, and butler, Ridgeway, star in a murder story set at a country house. A good starter volume for anyone who doesn't have many similar books on the shelf. (May)