Historical mysteries and thrillers ranging from pre-history to the mid 1900s (plus or minus); includes Golden Age
A compelling mix of spy thriller and mystery… Long ago, on a pre-pandemic trip to Las Vegas, my husband and I visited the National Atomic Testing Museum, which showcases the history of the dawn of the nuclear age and the bomb tests that occurred at the nearby Nevada Test Site. Although going to a museum …
A review of The Bitter Past by Bruce Borgos, coming on July 18 Read More »
The Physicists’ Daughter was one of my four or five most favorite mysteries of 2022, so I’ve been eagerly looking forward to the next book in the series, The Traitor Beside Her. And it doesn’t disappoint! All of the same elements that I loved in the first book are still there in this one, however …
A review of The Traitor Beside Her by Mary Anna Evans – published today Read More »
A fun YA mystery that’s good for adults too… I hadn’t realized that The Starlet Letter was a young adult mystery when I requested a review copy. But that didn’t really matter too much – it was still a fun mystery with an engaging pair of protagonists, and a really nicely developed historical background. Vivian …
Review of The Starlet Letter by Julie Mathison – out tomorrow Read More »
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 »
