Two more on Amazon:
Mantis (Fogarty-Tanaka Series) by Richard LaPlante
Philadelphia is plagued by a series of psychosexual killings that will repulse and engross readers of this slightly over-the-edge thriller about a martial artist gone mad. Scruffy homicide Lt. Bill Fogarty gets nowhere on the case until smooth Joey Tanaka, a young half-American assistant medical examiner (and All-Japan Championship karate finalist), identifies wounds on an art student/stripper victim as typical of Praying Mantis Kung Fu--a karate style based on the insect's attack moves. La Plante's unbalanced half-Vietnamese villain seeks perfection by mimicking the mantis's deadly mating ritual: he sexually attacks his victims, male and female, before savagely doing them in. A police sketch of the killer resembles Tanaka, which worries Fogarty. Then the killer ruthlessly batters Fogarty and kidnaps Tanaka's lover, Rachel--raising the stakes. La Plante flirts with the supernatural when Tanaka's relationship with the killer leads to a final face-off. The mixed ethnic cast reads true--if somewhat stereotyped--in this Bruce-Lee-meets-city-cop adventure. The author, who is married to Lynda La Plante, creator of the Prime Suspect series for PBS, has previously published several books in the U.K.
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Atomic Renaissance: American Women Mystery Writers of the 1940s and 1950s by Jeffrey Marks
America in the 1950s was a place of Eisenhower, the Korean Conflict, McCarthy, and Sputnik. Women found themselves trapped into a mold of Donna Reed and June Cleaver, marginalized by the hyper-masculinity of the age. Mystery fiction had become a male bastion as well, 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 during that post-World War II era, seven women carved out a place in the genre. These women became the bestsellers of their time by innovation and experimentation. Margaret Millar, Patricia Highsmith, Leslie Ford, Charlotte Armstrong, Dorothy B. Hughes, Mignon Eberhart, and Phoebe Atwood Taylor are in no way similar to each other in style, theme, or subject matter. However, their writings created an Atomic Renaissance that continues to impact the mystery field today.