HISTORICAL MYSTERIES

This bibliography of historical mysteries is not comprehensive, but it does have variety! The titles chose give intimate portraits of fascinating people and richly detailed depictions of days gone by, all wrapped up in a well-written mystery.

Alexander, Bruce
Blind Justice
G.P. Putnam’s, 1995.
Soaked with atmosphere sights and sounds, of the ERA, 18^th century London serves as backdrop to Judge Sir John Fielding’s introduction as a detective. A founder of London’s first police force, the Bow Street Runners, the blind judge together with his 13-year old sidekick (and set of eyes) Jeremy Proctor, delves into a world of darkness and evil to find the truth behind an assumed suicide of a lord.

Day, Dianne
Fire and Fog
Doubleday, 1996.
For Fremont Jones Wednesday, April 18, 1906 started with bells-church bells signaling the onset of the Great San Francisco earthquake. Barely escaping being crushed by a falling armoire, Fremont runs to her office to check on her beloved typewriter. Although her typewriter is intact, the encroaching fires force her to grab it and run. When Fremont‘s landlords are found dead in the office building, she realizes they were not killed by the earthquake. Failing to convince the police of this she decides to learn what happened. She meets a number of unusual people, places her life in danger, and questions what she wished to do with the rest of her life. The second book in an excellent historical series.

Grayson, Richard
Death Off Stage
St. Martin’s Press, 1992.
A range of interesting characters from all classes bring turn-of –century Paris to life, as Inspector Gautier investigates several seemingly unrelated cases, from the murder of an infant to poisoning of a prima ballerina. Both his heart and mind are engaged, since several cases involve the visiting Dashkova Ballet Company, a dance led by his lover Princess Sophia. Applying intuition and solid investigative techniques, Gautier discovers the link among the cases and finds himself in danger as he brings the murderers to justice.

Gregory, Susanna
An Unholy Alliance
St. Martin’s Press, 1997.
England is barely beginning to recover from the effects of the Black /death in 1348. People despairing of God’s love have turned increasingly to satanic cults, the unscrupulous are seizing trade, land livelihoods. Matthew Bartholomew, and Benedictine monk Brother Michael, investigate the mysterious appearance of a dead friar inside a locked chest, but did the friar die of ignorance or malice? And did his death have anything to do with the four prostitutes murdered in the last two months? A strong first novel that, though awkward in spots, delivers a close look at the history of Cambridge and a fascinating period in British history.

Hatvary, George Egon
The Murder of Edgar Allan Poe
Carroll & Graf, 1997.
What really happened to Edgar Allan Poe in Baltimore on that fateful Election Day in 1849? Befriended by a shadowy stranger, the acerbic author is drugged, dressed in rags, and left to dies outside of Gunner’s Hall, a raucous tavern and makeshift polling place. Auguste Dupin, Poe’s renowned detective hero is summoned from Paris by the writer’s distraught aunt. Dupin promptly sails for America to console grieving relatives, privately suspecting a grotesque literary vendetta.

King, Laurie R.
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, or, on the Segregation of the Queen
St. Martin’s Press, 1994.
Trapped in an unpleasant legal entanglement with a cold and abusive guardian, fifteen year old orphan Mary Russell finds the ideal mentor in the retired beekeeper whose cottage borders her home in Sussex Downs. Her keen intellect intrigues and enchants the Great Detective, and their relationship grows and deepens into a mutually respectful friendship as he involves her in several investigations, the author has succeeded in creating a new "Baker Street regular" without compromising the character of the Sherlock Holmes himself.

Lawrence, Margaret
Hearts and Bones
Avon Books, 1996.
Set amidst the chaos and uncertainty of post-Revolutionary War America, Hanna Trevor, midwife in the small Maine village of Rufford, delves into the murder and rape of a young mother whose husband is gone surveying the western lands. It is the dead of winter and as Hannah in her characteristic red oak prowls the snow-driven paths of the village, she comes under the scrutiny of a former lover, the judging eyes of the village and the gaze of a murderer.

Linscott, Gillian
Sister Beneath the Sheet
St. Martin’s, 1991.
Famed courtesan Topaz Brown died in Biarritz, leaving her fortune to the Women’s Social and Political Union, an embattled organization fighting for the vote for women. One of its leaders, Nell Bray, is assigned to go to protect the union’s interests, since Topaz’s brother is contesting the will, claiming his sister’s suicide was the result of a deranged mind. Topaz’s maid is convinced her mistress was murdered. Nell begins sleuthing, completes her mission, and sees justices served, in a lively story that gracefully evokes the fervor of the suffragettes and the old style grandeur of the rich and famous.

Maher, Mary
The Devil’s Card
St. Martin’s, 1992.
A fictionalized review of a celebrated 1889 Chicago case: the disappearance and murder of Dr. Patrick Cronin. The details are grimly dramatic—a naked corpse, wearing only a scapular, found in a Lakeview storm-drain, a bloody trunk that may have held the corpse; a blood-drenched cabin, and the victims crusade against the nationalistic Irish secret society. Reporter Tom Martin struggles with his own identity as an Irish- American as he works on the Martin case. A sensitive, slow-moving historical reconstruction of ethnic tensions among the Chicago Irish. A fascinating, grittily authentic mystery.

Newman, Sharan
Death Comes As Epiphany
TOR, 1993.
Catherine LeVendeur has been asked by the prioress, Heloise, to pretend to leave the Order of the Parclete so she can go undercover and investigate the possibility the heretical statements that have been found in the psalters that were copied by the novitiates. As she journeys to the library at St. Denis she meets and falls in love with a young Saxon, Edgar. This historical mystery is the first in the series that follows Catherine through courtship and marriage to Edgar. It is very atmospheric with details about daily life in 1139 A.D France.

Nolan, William F.
The Marble Orchard
St. Martin’s Press, 1996.
Raymond Chandler, Dasheill Hammett, and Erle Stanley Gardner are back as amateur detectives, following their debut in The Black Mask Murders. Here they interact in a complex, colorful and richly textured thriller. Narrated by Chandler, the adventure begins in East Los Angeles with the discovery of what seems to be a ritual suicide in a Chinese cemetery. Action moves from the Hearst castle, the abandoned canals of Venice by the Sea, an ornate hotel on Coronado island, to the Victorian mansions of Bunker Hill. Along the way readers will encounter real-life personalities. Nolan expertly evokes the surreal world of Southern California and Hollywood in the 1930s, as the all-time masters of crime fiction return in a bold, inventive novel.

Penman, Sharon Kay
The Queen’s Man
Henry Holt, 1966.
It is 1193 and England’s king, Richard the Lionhearted, is missing. Having left to fight the Crusades, no one had heard from him for weeks. His mother Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine is determined to find him while his brother John, heir to the throne, speculates that he has been killed. Traveling to London, young Justin De Quincy, witnesses the murder of the Queen’s messenger and discovers a vital letter on the body addressed to the Queen. Upon delivery of this letter Justin becomes " the Queen’s man" and becomes involved in sinister plots, murder, and treachery in the coming months.

Robb, Candace M.
The Apothecary Rose
St. Martin’s Press, 1993.
Details of medieval life and the apothecary trade abound as Owen Archer, former Captain of Archers, is sent to York to investigate the death of the ward of the Lord Chancellor of England. Apprenticed to Lucie, wife of Master Apothecary Nicholas Wilton, Owen uses this cover to track down the murderer while falling in love with Lucie, who to Owen’s dismay, is a strong suspect.

Robinson, Lynda S.
Murder at the Feast of Rejoicing
Walker, 1996.
Lord Meren, the Eyes and Ears of Pharaoh Tutankhamum, is told by the Pharaoh to go to his ancestral home and rest. His journey covers the fact that he and his son Kesen are secretly taking the bodies and treasure of Akhenaten and Hefertitl to their new secret burial site. Unfortunately when Meren comes home, he finds that his family has thrown a Feast of Rejoicing to celebrate his homecoming. During the party, Meren discovers the body of Anhai, the wife of his cousin, in his granary. As he delves into everyone’s motives, he discovers that the intrigues and murderous actions of the dead pharaoh. Akhenaten continues to haunt everyone. Meren must uncover old hatreds in order to solve this murder.

Satterthwait. Walter
Escape
St. Martin’s Press, 1995.
An eccentric lord with Socialist leanings, a vulgar widow and her paid companion, Harry Houdini, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and a Pinkerton agent are just a few of the people gathered in a haunted country manor house for séance. When the Earl of Axminister is murdered in his bed, Houdini and a Scotland Yard detective enter into a competition to solve the crime. Humorous entertainment.

Smith, Martin Cruz
Rose
Random House, 1996.
Jonathan Blair returns to Victorian England from a period of African exploration dogged by scandal and malaria. Out of options, he accepts an unwelcome offer from his former patron Bishop Hannay to investigate disappearance of a cleric in the mining village of Wigan, Blair finds deceit and danger, and a growing attraction for Rose, a mysterious and independent "pit girl".