Women have always had the right to go to jail. For a long time, however, they did not have the right to make a law or judge a case. What they could do was write, and they made use of a variety of literary practices from reportage to the whodunnit to comment on crime and gender. This book examines a number of high-profile criminal cases, from the Whitechapel murders of the 1880s to the Children's Home scandals of the present day, which have had particular impact on women. It explores plays and government reports; whodunnits and funeral rituals; novels and pictures; criminology and memoirs; sroties by survivors and famous trials; feminist polemic and The Mousetrap. It examines how women are written about, as victims, as criminals, and as investigators, and how they write about themselves.