Historical mysteries and thrillers ranging from pre-history to the mid 1900s (plus or minus); includes Golden Age
It’s hard to believe that The Net of Steel is Fiona Buckley’s twenty-second Ursula Blanchard (now Ursula Stannard) mystery, and the series is still going strong. And in fact, it might even be getting better… As The Net of Steel opens, Ursula faces a number of life’s milestones: her son, Harry, has gotten engaged; …
A review of The Net of Steel by Fiona Buckley – coming soon Read More »
Whose mummy was it, and what was inside??? Heart of the Nile is the second book I’ve read in the Cyrus Barker/Thomas Llewelyn series by Will Thomas, and I liked this one a lot too. (See my earlier review of Lethal Pursuit here.) As Heart opens, Barker and Llewelyn are approached by the wife of Phillip …
Heart of the Nile by Will Thomas is out today – a review Read More »
Nice plot and stylish writing, but I couldn’t get into the characters… It’s unusual to find a murder mystery that is so obviously set during World War II that was also written during the war, rather than after the fighting was over. And Christianna Brand’s Green for Danger is one of those books. It was …
A review of Green for Danger by Christianna Brand – coming soon Read More »
Now starring Libertus’ son, Junio… Rosemary Rowe’s The Rewards of Treachery is another excellent entry in her Libertus series – although in Treachery, the focus shifts from Libertus, who fled Glevum at the end of the previous book, to Libertus’ adopted son, Junio, who has taken up his father’s mosaic business, and also more-or-less inherited …
A review of The Rewards of Treachery by Rosemary Rowe – coming soon Read More »
I hadn’t read anything by Laura Lippman in decades (literally), so I was happy to receive a review copy of Lady in the Lake. First, the good stuff! I loved the well-drawn 1960s Baltimore setting, with very different attitudes towards women working, mixed-race relationships, divorce, etc. Although I was only a child then, Lippman’s writing …
A fun mystery, with a bit of 1940s awkwardness… The Turquoise Shop is the first in Frances Crane’s Patrick and Jean Abbott series, set in a fictional New Mexico artists’ colony, Santa Maria, which has some notable similarities to the town of Taos, where Crane lived. The book was written in the 1940s, and unfortunately …
A review of The Turquoise Shop by Frances Crane – recently published Read More »
A fun collection of period short mysteries… Way back in the early twentieth century, Gelett Burgess wrote a series of short mysteries featuring “Astro the Seer”. Astro ostensibly uses his metaphysical and extrasensory talents, such as reading palms, calculating astrological profiles, and feeling magnetic vibrations, to help his clients. But he doesn’t really rely on …
A review of The Master of Mysteries by Gelett Burgess – recently published Read More »
A great start to a new series… Fans of Jeri Westerson’s Crispin Guest “Medieval Noir” series will also enjoy the first book in her new King’s Fool series, Courting Dragons. This series features Will Somers, Henry VIII’s court jester, as the protagonist, and to be sure, there’s less noir, but all the key elements are …
A review of Courting Dragons by Jeri Westerson, coming in January 2023 Read More »
A nice start to a spin-off series! I’ve been a fan of Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher series for a couple of decades, but I watch almost no TV. So I barely knew that there was a TV series for the original books, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, and was completely unaware that there was also a …
A review of Just Murdered by Katherine Kovacic – coming in Jan 2023 Read More »
A light-hearted and enjoyable series starter! The Two Hundred Ghost is the first book in Henrietta Hamilton’s Sally and Johnny Heldar series. At this point, Sally and Johnny aren’t yet married, so it’s an origin story of sorts, and other familiar characters (Tim, Father William) make their initial appearances too. And it’s set in one …
Review of The Two Hundred Ghost by Henrietta Hamilton Read More »
