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[[Category:Crime (Historical)|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Crime (Historical)]] __NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->{{newreview|author=Frances Brody|title=Death in the Stars (Kate Shackleton Mysteries)|rating=4.5|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=Much as it did in 1999, eclipse fever gripped the country in 1927, but private investigator Kate Shackleton couldn't understand why theatre star Selina Fellini had approached her for help when it seemed that all she needed was for a flight to be arranged to take her from Leeds to Giggleswick School, where she was to view the eclipse. Surely she didn't need a sleuth for this? Kate went ahead and organised the flight, which collected Fellini, comic Billy Moffatt and Kate from Soldiers' Field in Leeds and landed them at the school in good time. It was obvious that the singer was worried about something, but she didn't seem able to explain what it was.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349414319</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= William Sutton|title= Lawless and the House of Electricity|rating= 5|genre= Crime (Historical)|summary= Campbell Lawless is back, this time tasked with solving a series of terrorist attacks across the nation. Is it the work of the French, as police and public are being led to believe, or someone closer to home? Who can be trusted and what does Roxbury, an innovative inventor previously disgraced, have to do with the bombs used to cause chaos across the country? Employing the services of Molly, the effervescent ragamuffin from his previous adventures, he sets in motion a campaign of subterfuge which uncovers long held secrets, skulduggery and the desperate yearnings beneath Roxbury's constant invention.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785650130</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author= J Jefferson Farjeon|title= Seven Dead|rating= 4|genre= Historical Fiction|summary=Ted Lyte was petty criminal, but not usually the housebreaking type. He lacked the courage. However, needs must, and whilst feeling down on his luck he decided to try his chances at an isolated house with a shuttered window. ''...he might find a bit of alright behind those shutters! Wot abart it?'' Ted does indeed find something interesting behind the shutters, but it definitely isn't what he'd hoped. In a locked room he finds seven dead bodies; six men and a woman. Fleeing the house in horror, he is pursued Seishi Yokomizo and caught by a passing yachtsman, Thomas Hazeldean, who also happens to be a journalist. Fascinated by Ted's story Louise Heal Kawai (and a possible scooptranslator), Hazeldean decides to investigate this curious case and its assortment of odd clues, including a portrait shot through the heart, an old cricket ball and a mysterious note written by one of the victims.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0712356886</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Susanna Gregory|title=The Habit of Murder: The Twenty Third Chronicle of Matthew BartholomewHonjin Murders
|rating=4
|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=It was 1360 and Michaelhouse was in dire financial straits: they could last a little longer but not that long. Then it seemed that a lifeline might have been thrown to them when they heard that the wealthy Elizabeth de Burgh of the Suffolk town of Clare was dead and it was possible that The Lady, as she was knownTo many readers, had left them a legacy. It seemed that the best thing phrase 'locked room murder mystery' is enough to do was make the book one to go to Clare to claim read; preferably quantified by the money (or to try and prove that it had been words 'clever'intendedor 'good' and should therefore be paid) with all haste. The real mission could be concealed behind the bald statement that they were there to attend the funeral. Matthew Bartholomew was one of the contingent from Michaelhouse.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751562637</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Elizabeth Peters and Joan Hess|title= The Painted Queen: an Amelia Peabody Mystery|rating= 4|genre= Crime (Historical)|summary= Amelia Peabody is a no-nonsense lady For those who endures all manner of murder attemptsneed more, kidnappings and sundry other crimes while on various archaeological digs in Egypt with equanimity and composure. She here is either revered or feared (or both) by villains, museum curators, family and workmen alike for her caustic tongue and the steel-reinforced parasol she brandishes at the first sign of danger. And yet, once the evil-doers have been locked up, precious objects returned to their owners and all injuries bandaged, she still insists on all the decorum of the English abroad: formal dress for dinner and only the politest and least contentious topics for dinner-table conversation. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472126823</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Sara Sheridan|title= Operation Goodwood: a Mirabelle Bevan Mystery|rating= 5|genre= Crime (Historical)|summary= In this, the fifth novel in the Mirabelle Bevan Mystery series, extra background – we have reached 1955. There is less emphasis on rationing now: time has moved on from the post-war privations we saw 're in our first encounter with Mirabelle and her warm, cheery companion Vesta rural Japan in 1951, a time when tearing a stocking was a disaster of the first order1930s. Various types The oldest son of prejudice are still rife, however, and Sara Sheridan an esteemed family is a real expert at dropping in that smallbelatedly getting married, lightly sketched detail which tells us we are still in a Britain overshadowed by although the aftermath of conflict. A woman who walks alone into a bar will whole affair is really not as ostentatious as it might be served; the British Empire is still front-page news, and the colour of a person's skin is still an almost insurmountable barrier to equality of opportunity. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472122364</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= M J Tjia|title= She Be Damned|rating= 4|genre= Crime (Historical) |summary= London, 1863: prostitutes in the Waterloo area are turning – hardly anybody has turned up dead, their sexual organs mutilated and removed. When another girl goes missing, fears grow that the killer may have claimed their latest victim. The police are what with it being arranged at a loss and so it falls to courtesan and professional detective, Heloise Chancey, to investigategreat haste. With the assistance of She only has an uncle representing her trusty Chinese maid, Amah Li Leen, Heloise inches closer to the truth. But when Amah is implicated in the brutal plot, Heloise must reconsider whom she can trust, before the killer strikes again.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178507931X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=H B Lyle|title=The Irregular: A Different Class of Spy|rating=4.5|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=London 1909: Revolution is spreading throughout Russia and Europe. Meanwhile Britain, a land growing accustomed to peacefamily, is becoming a magnet for spies and disruptionone thing. Vernon Kell, Head of War Office Counter-IntelligenceEither way, knows that the country's equilibrium depends on the discovery and disposal of the growing number of foreign spy networks. Unfortunately his masters in government can't see what he can and Kell's own agents are being killed off too fast for him to collect evidence. That's when he meets Wiggins. This is a man with a superlative background: trained by Sherlock Holmes and, years back, a star of Holmes' child Irregulars. Now Kell is getting somewhere… Let battle commence!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>147365534X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Jane Menczer|title= An Unlikely Agent|rating= 4|genre= Crime (Historical)|summary=London, 1905. Margaret Trant lives with her ailing, irascible mother in a dreary boarding house in St John's Wood. The pair celebrations have fallen on hard timesgone ahead as planned, with only Margaret's meagre salary from a ramshackle import-export company keeping them afloat.When a stranger on the tram hands her a newspaper open at for the recruitment page, Margaret spots an advertisement that promises wedded couple to 'open new horizons beyond your wildest dreams!'. After a gruelling interview, she finds herself in a new position as a secretary in a dingy backstreet shop.But all is not as it seems; she is in fact working for a highly secret branch of the intelligence service, Bureau 8, whose mission is be slashed to track down and neutralise a ruthless band of anarchists known as the Scorpions.Margaret's guilty love of detective fiction scarcely prepares her for the reality of true criminality, and her journey of self-discovery forms the heart of this remarkable novel, as she discovers death in herself resourcefulness, courage, independence and their private annex before the first stirrings of lovesun rises on their marriage.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846973805</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Andrew Wilson|title= A Talent for Murder|rating=4.5|genre= Crime (Historical)|summary= Agatha Christie wrote some tantalising crime thrillers back in her day, and here Andrew Wilson makes her a victim to a plot not unlike one of her own. It's all about the mystery, and it really drives the story forward. Agatha is ambushed by What with a strange man at the train station; she is given a proposition that confuses her and secretly intrigues her. Indeed, for this man wants her to commit a murder. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471148211</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Martin Edwards (editor)|title= Continental Crimes|rating= 4|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=It's not clear whether the short story has gone out missing parts of fashion, relegated to the pages of certain types of women's magazines, or whether the magazines in which the format still holds its own are themselves not as high-profile as once they might have been. Perhaps they never were, perhaps we only know about them his fingers being in retrospect. Whatever the truth of that it would seem that the golden age of the short storyneighbourhood, coincided delightfully with the golden age of crime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0712356797</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Philip Kerr|title= Prussian Blue: Bernie Gunther Thriller 12|rating= 3.5|genre= Crime (Historical) |summary= Bernie Gunther is not your typical hero. In 1939, he was stationed in Berlin as a police officer handling murder cases and occasionally doing work for some high-ranking Nazis. Although never a Nazi party member himself (he was a known member mysterious use of the Social Democratic Party), he understood that the best thing he could do for himself at that time was to make himself indispensable to men like Reinhard Heydrich and Martin Bormann. So when he is assigned to solve a murder that has occurred traditional musical instrument at Hitler's Berghof in the Bavarian mountains, he knows that he needs to do it quickly and discreetly – not just for justice's sake, but for his own. He is given exactly one week to apprehend the suspect, and he hopes that with the help time of his friend Friedrich Korsch, an investigator with the Krimialpolizei (or Kripocrime, for short) he just might get lucky. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784296481</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Alis Hawkins|title= None So Blind|rating= 5|genre= Crime (Historical)|summary=When a body is accidentally uncovered nearby in 1850, Harry Probert-Lloyd the London barrister this case has recently returned to his father's house in West Wales due to deteriorating sight. That means Harry is on hand to press for justice, since he knows whose remains they must be. Unfortunately he's up against a few formidable opponents from the past, not least the Rebecca rioters, members lot of an illegal group from a few years earlier, and officially it looks like justice might not be on the cards. With the assistance of a local clerk, John Davies, Harry takes up the investigation himself, but peculiar about it seems like both of them know more than they are willing to admit. Will the outcome be worth stirring up all those secrets for?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1911332112</amazonuk>1782275002
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gavin ScottB07XLM3SM6|title=The Age of Olympus (Duncan Forrester Mystery 2)Murder at the Dolphin Hotel|author=Helena Dixon
|rating=4
|genre=Crime (Historical)
|summary=Whilst part of an SOE mission to kidnap a German commander Elowed Underhay was just twenty seven when she disappeared from Dartmouth in Greece during the warJune 1916, leaving her daughter, Duncan Forrester came across an ancient Cretan stoneKitty, which he hoped could lead to in the deciphering care of Linear Bher grandmother. The war is now officially over (although a lot A great deal of people are still fighting itmoney had been spent to find out what happened to her and the conclusion was that she was dead, mentally if not physically) and Forrester mainly because there was no evidence to suggest otherwise. Kitty has returned come to Athens terms with his lover, Sophie Amfeldt-Laurvigthis and in 1933 she was running the Dolphin Hotel in Dartmouth with her grandmother, intent on getting the necessary permissions when her grandmother had to go leave to Crete and retrieve the stonelook after her sister who was ill. It She was whilst they were reluctant to leave Kitty in Athens that Forrester was charge - and Kitty could not understand why. She's always coped with the mix of holidaymakers, boating people and the unwitting witness to naval college on the poisoning edge of a Greek poet town before - and where he found himself pursued by a man wearing a maskshe's done every job in the hotel. Strange as all this might seem, Forrester is convinced that the poet was not the intended victim: it should And she particularly cannot understand why her grandmother's friends have been a general who roped in to keep an eye on things ''and'' why Captain Matthew Bryant has been approached hired to lead ELAS, the military arm take charge of security at the Greek communists. He's the sort of charismatic man who could sway a lot of people to follow him adn that would mean certain warhotel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1783297824</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alan Kennedy0349423067|title=A Time to Tell Lies|rating=4|genre=Crime (Historical) |summary= Psychologist Alan Kennedy's fifth novel continues the story he began with [[Lucy by Alan Kennedy]]. In the autumn of 1942, Captain Alex Vere and Justine Perry are among the men and women picked up and taken to a stately home in Scotland, where they are trained in spy skills. After this first encounter, Alex is smitten yet uncertain if he will ever see Justine again. The spy's life is dangerous and unpredictable, after all. Six weeks later, though, they meet up again in southwest France, where they have been sent to collect Simone, a Special Operations Executive agent. It's Alex's first mission (Justine's fourth) and all goes horribly awry. Alex ends up in custody at the Gendarmerie, facing a German who knows he has a false passport.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0993202322</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Lois Austen-Leigh|title= The Incredible Crime|rating= 4.5|genre= Crime (Historical)|summary= Prudence Pinsent flings her novel across the room. ''Unutterable bilge'' is her description of the typical country house murder mystery of romantic novels. The deliberate irony of this is that ''The Incredible Crime'' is precisely one such novel. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0712356029</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Helen Dunmore|title=Birdcage Walk|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Bristol 1792: Lizzie married well. John Diner Tredevant is a property developer who has reached the zenith of his life's work: building a terrace of prestigious houses overlooking the Avon Gorge. In a time of turbulence as France reaches the dawn of revolution, Britain, including Diner, fears it may spread. This puts Lizzie in a difficult position since her mother and step-father both believe in propagating pamphlets and ideas of egalitarianism for and to all, including women. In other words, they think nothing of spreading ideas of the sort that fanned Body on the French flames. However, that's not Lizzie's only problem… there is a darkness in her husband's past of which she's unaware.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091959403</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Lindsey Davis|title= The Third Nero|rating= 5|genre= Crime Train (HistoricalKate Shackleton Mysteries)|summary= Lindsey Davis is one clever lady. Having enthralled readers for years with the adventures of Marcus Didius Falco, the Ancient Roman informer (or, to put it in more modern terms, private eye) she sustains our interest by allowing Falco to take a well-deserved and politically strategic retirement while his adopted daughter Albia takes over the family business. Her wit is dry as dust, she has a highly desirable (well, he's called Manlius: what else could he be?) love-interest and as a Briton, her take on Roman bureaucracy and pettifogging officialdom is just as sharp and funny as her cynical dad's ever was. A new main character, a new way of doing things, which somehow manages to retain all the best elements of the original Falco. Genius.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473613426</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Antonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)|title=Retribution RoadFrances Brody
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime (Historical)
|summary=A suicidal overdose and the murder of upper class Cecil Langley and his wife are two events that may be unconnected. However this is England in 1936, From Christmas to Easter a magnet for opposing forces and their first moves in preparation for the coming conflict, assisted or prevented by a royal crisis (depending on which side you're on). Cambridge history professor Tom Wilde may fall into the middle of this accidentally train ran from Leeds City Station to begin with but his curiosity has been piqued enough to ensure heKing's not walking away.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785762613</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Ian Ross|title=The Mask of Command (Twilight of Empire)|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary= Warning: spoilers ahead for previous books in the series. 305AD: Castus AureliusCross, following arriving before dawn so that the death of his predecessor, has been promoted to commander (or vir perfecctissiums) of the Roman forces at the Rhine. He's also been ordered to take Crispus, Constantine's son and heir, for the character-building experience. That complicates matters as when Castus isn't trying to keep Crispus alive, he's finding forced rhubarb it difficult carried could be taken to increase his own chance of survival, especially considering how the last Rhine commander met his end.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784975257</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Graham Hurley|title=Finisterre|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=The Second World War is almost lost but in a last, desperate roll of the dice the German High command launch Operation FinisterreCovent Garden. In America the apparent suicide early March 1929 one of a scientist working on the atom bomb and off porters who was unloading the coast of Spain boxes discovered the shipwreck body of a German submarineman, become catalysts as the plans spiral out of control, leading to a shattering climax. 'Finisterre' is a crime thriller packed with grit, suspense stripped naked and style.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784977810</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Shirley McKay|title=1588: A Calendar of Crime (A Hew Cullan Mystery)|rating=4.5|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=A lot of crime happens in St Andrews during 1588 and therefore in the life of law lecturer and local investigator Hew Cullen too. As we travel through the year with him, his recently wedded English wife Frances, doctor brother in law Giles and his sister Meg, the wise woman, we also encounter some no means of his most interesting casesidentification. In fact there's one to match each of the year's big festivals: Candlemas, Whitsun, Lammas, Martinmas and Yule.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846973635</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Erle Stanley Gardner|title= The Knife Slipped|rating= 5|genre= Crime |summary= Before we begin, I must confess. Confess that I am Scotland Yard hit a hardboiled noir addict. Therefore, I approach each grisly tale of murder, private detectives dead end and femme fatales with a sense of wonder but also scepticism. ''Surely'', I think ''this one can't be as good as the last, it must have flaws, poor characters and lack called on the necessary grit to be a true hardboiled noir masterpiece?'' so you can imagine my trepidation when opening the Knife Slipped. I was wrong, wonderfully wrong. This book for me is the essence services of Kate Shackleton in the hardboiled noir genre and E.S. Gardner is a marvel. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1783299274</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Wray Delaney|title=An Almond for a Parrot|rating=4.5|genre=Women's Fiction|summary=It was when Tully gained a step-mother hope that her education really started. That was the beginning of the road to discovery. The discovery that she can realise ghosts for others, that she can escape the cruelty of an alcoholic father knowledge and the discovery of the income and pleasure her body can generate. That, connections in turn, leads to Yorkshire would give them the rather classy Fairy House brothel and, now, the condemned cell in Newgate Prisonlead they needed. As she awaits Kate immediately found herself hamstrung: Commander Woodhead remembered her fate, Tully writes her autobiography ''An Almond for as a Parrot'' child and allows us could not come to read over her shoulder.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>000818254X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=S G Maclean|title=The Black Friar: Damian Seeker 2|rating=5|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=When a dead monk is discovered walled into a disused monastery the local gossip is awash terms with remarks on the miracle of his well-preserved body all these years after the monastery was abandoned. Investigator and Captain of Cromwell's guard Damian Seeker has other ideas. This is a recent non-clergy death. This is Carter Blyth, a man on such a secret mission fact that even Cromwell didn't know about it. This will add complications to the already convoluted and dangerous path that Seeker will take to solve the crime, one of the complications being very close to home.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782068449</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= M J Carter|title=The Devil's Feast|rating= 4.5|genre= Crime (Historical)|summary=London, the early 1840s: the newly-opened Reform Club is the focal point for the Liberal elite, where Whigs and Radicals can co-exist in harmony. Or such she was the intention. With now a celebrity chef woman experienced in its up to the minute kitchen, however, the club seems to have more of a reputation for its dinners than its politics, and when a man dies horribly after eating one the Reform could have a problem on its hands. Particularly when it begins to look like dealing with murder. Luckily William Avery agrees to look into the matter with some urgency, but – as everyone keeps asking him – where on earth is his professional investigator friend Jeremiah Blake?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241146364</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= George Mann (Editor)|title= Associates of Sherlock Holmes|rating= 4.5|genre= Crime (Historical)|summary=The world-famous consulting detective Sherlock Holmes needs no introduction; a redoubtable protagonist with an appeal that shows no sign of waning. ''Associates of Sherlock Holmes,'' however, moves the spotlight away from our hero and focuses on the exploits of some of the minor players who have featured in his adventures over the years. Here we get a chance to reacquaint ourselves with friends and foes alike, all keen He was reluctant to give their own, unique perspective of the indomitable investigator.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1783299304</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Lindsey Davis|title= The Graveyard of the Hesperides|rating= 5|genre= Crime (Historical)|summary= Our heroine Albia's grey-eyed and broad-shouldered love interest in this, the fourth of the Falco New Generation crime novels (Falco himself has got on the wrong side of Emperor Domitian, and has very sensibly retired to the coast) is called Manlius – that alone should be enough to tell you reams about the wickedly sly sense of humour Ms Davis displays in her novels. The setting is once again Ancient Rome, and Ms Davis provides enough local colour to create a world so convincing you could almost be there. In fact, all the descriptions are so vivid that, as you pull in your skirts or bewail the fate of your brand-new sandals to follow our gutsy heroine into picturesque slums like information which the Brown Toad bar or Mucky Mule Mews, you could be forgiven for suspecting you've wandered into somewhere far more familiar, like, say, the back streets of Brumpolice held.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473613396</amazonuk>
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===[[Indian Summer: a Mirabelle Bevan Mystery by Sara Sheridan]]===
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Crime (Historical)|Crime (Historical)]]
Life has changed dramatically for Mirabelle, our favourite fifties sleuth, since the war, and not always for the better. When she first settled in Brighton she was alone, rudderless and secretly grieving for Jack, the lover who died before he could leave his wife. As time went by she found in herself an ability to solve crimes, made friends including an ebullient and determined young woman called Vesta who refused to let a little thing like racial prejudice stop her doing what she wanted, and even found consolation in the arms of a rather charming policeman. [[Indian Summer: a Mirabelle Bevan Mystery by Sara Sheridan|Full Review]]
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===[[The Courier by Kjell Ola Dahl and Don Bartlett (translator)]]===
[[image:3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Crime (Historical)|Crime (Historical)]]
Nazi-occupied Oslo, 1942. There, I've given the game away. For in a book that centres around a murder, I've told you who did it – the Nazis, surely? Well, that certainly has to remain to be seen in this volume, which splits its time between one of war, when a young woman sees her father arrested, and their store condemned as Jewish, and rushes to her best friend to help – not knowing she will never see her alive again, and the late 1960s, when great consternation is being felt. In this timeline, a maverick agent is back in town, one who might have been fingered for murdering that female victim, even though she and he lived together with their baby as a young family, except he was thought by all to have died in the War… [[The Courier by Kjell Ola Dahl and Don Bartlett (translator)|Full Review]]
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===[[Mrs Mohr Goes Missing by Maryla Szymiczkova and Antonia Lloyd-Jones (translator)]]===
[[image:3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Crime (Historical)|Crime (Historical)]]
Meet Zofia. A socially climbing wife of a medical professor, she's intent on making herself known as a charitable lady, and keen on her husband progressing yet through his esteemed career. In 1890s Cracow, life is pretty good, but she knows it could always be better. Meanwhile, other people's life could certainly be better – cholera is nearing the city due to lack of hygiene, and many people have to fall on charity and almshouses to keep a roof over their heads. One such was Mrs Mohr, although she was rich enough to keep private lodgings and staff in her charitable home. I say ''was'', for she has vanished. Only due to Zofia's help does she get found, dead and in a place the near-lame woman could never reach by herself. Just who could be killing people in a charity home, and to what end? And why does Zofia feel the need to make a name for herself by answering those questions? [[Mrs Mohr Goes Missing by Maryla Szymiczkova and Antonia Lloyd-Jones (translator)|Full Review]]
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===[[Things in Jars by Jess Kidd]]===
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Crime (Historical)|Crime (Historical)]]
A child has gone missing. The detective asked to take on the case is still struggling with the shame and frustration left by a previous case, where the child was not found in time. Hardly original themes for a private eye thriller. And yet . . . take another look. This detective is a woman, and the setting is Victorian London, with all the rich and colourful paradoxes of that era: technical and scientific progress jostling for space beside superstition and a fascination with the bizarre and the downright hideous. And before you're more than a couple of pages in, you realise just how much more unusual our heroine is than you expected. Bridie Devine may dress in half-mourning, with a widow's cap and stout, shiny boots, but the tobacco she smokes in her pipe (my dear, what an utterly ''fast'' thing for a lady to do!) is mixed with a nugget of something, well, let's say recreational, created by her chemist friend Prudhoe. The fact that it's actually meant to cure bronchial problems is by the by. Her housemaid, being seven foot tall, is also somewhat remarkable. And then, of course, there's the ghost. Ruby Doyle, world famous tattooed boxer (deceased) accompanies Bridie all through her investigation, and it's clear he has a soft spot for the determined young woman. If he really exists, that is. [[Things in Jars by Jess Kidd|Full Review]]
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===[[A Snapshot of Murder (Kate Shackleton Mysteries) by Frances Brody]]===
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Crime (Historical)|Crime (Historical)]]
Even detectives need a break and for Kate Shackleton, photography gives her the mental relaxation which she needs. When the local Photographic Society proposed an outing, Kate was keen to take the opportunity to visit Haworth and Stanbury, not least because the deeds of the Brontë Parsonage are being handed over so that it can become a museum and her parents will be there for the event. What could be better than seeing her family, witnessing a momentous event and having the opportunity to take photographs of the setting for ''Wuthering Heights''? Nothing could go wrong. Or could it? [[A Snapshot of Murder (Kate Shackleton Mysteries) by Frances Brody|Full Review]]
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===[[Charlesgate Confidential by Scott Von Doviak]]===
[[image:3star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Crime|Crime]], [[:Category:Crime (Historical)|Crime (Historical)]]
In 1946 a gang of criminals pull off an audacious art heist, making off with priceless works of art from a Boston Museum. These missing art works are never found. In 1988, a student finds himself caught up in the mystery of the missing art and hot on the trail of the multi-million-dollar reward. In 2014, the art is still missing and now dead bodies are turning up at the eponymous Charlesgate, filled with alumni celebrating their 25th reunion. As the body count rises, will we discover the truth behind the art theft decades earlier? [[Charlesgate Confidential by Scott Von Doviak|Full Review]]
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===[[A Step So Grave (Dandy Gilver) by Catriona McPherson]]===
[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Crime (Historical)|Crime (Historical)]]
Dandy Gilver and family had made the arduous journey to Wester Ross, but Dandy had mixed feelings even when they arrived. They were there to meet the family of Mallory, her son Donald's fiancee. It wasn't that Dandy thought Donald to be rather ''young'' at twenty three to be contemplating matrimony, but that Mallory was rather ''old'' for him at thirty. There was also a niggling worry because Donald wasn't the sharpest pin in the cushion. All the doubts had faded into insignificance though when they arrived at Applecross: they might have come to celebrate the fiftieth birthday of Lady Lavinia, Mallory's mother, but it soon became obvious that Donald was smitten by the mother rather than the daughter. Dandy and Hugh were considering whether or not they should try to put an end to the engagement when the news arrived that Lady Lavinia had been found dead. [[A Step So Grave (Dandy Gilver) by Catriona McPherson|Full Review]]
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===[[So Many Doors by Oakley Hall]]===
[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Crime|Crime]], [[:Category:Crime (Historical)|Crime (Historical)]], [[:Category:Thrillers|Thrillers]]
Vassilia Caroline Baird, known to all as V, is dead. Jack sits in his cell refusing to talk to the lawyer tasked with his defence. Starting at the murderous finale, Hall skillfully weaves together the stories of his key players, in a tale of love spanning decades and states, marriages and tragedies. By the time the truth is revealed, V will be dead but who else will lose their life? [[So Many Doors by Oakley Hall|Full Review]]
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===[[A Necessary Murder by M J Tjia]]===
[[image:3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Crime (Historical)|Crime (Historical)]]
It's 1863 and a little girl has been found murdered at the family home in Stoke Newington. A few days later and a few miles across London, a man is found dead in a similar way outside the opulent townhouse of Heloise Chancey, courtesan and part-time detective. Could they be connected? And what, if anything, does either of them have to do with Heloise's maid, Amah Li Leen, and the troubling events in her past which are threatening to resurface?[[A Necessary Murder by M J Tjia|Full Review]]
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===[[Russian Roulette by Sara Sheridan]]===
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Crime (Historical)|Crime (Historical)]]
It makes a pleasant change to have a female detective who isn't a slightly eccentric grandma, a world-weary cop with as many hang-ups, bad habits and family traumas as her male colleagues, or a slick, skinny, sharp-shooting type who lives in a loft and works out in the gym after work, boxing with (and trouncing) every big burly bloke they can throw at her. Mirabelle may have somehow got herself involved in crime-fighting, with all the requisite tropes of climbing through unguarded windows, contacts who are not one hundred per cent on the right side of the law, and a refusal to faint at the sight of blood, but she is, as everyone around her will attest, first and foremost a lady. Indeed, the first encounter we have with her in this, the sixth book in this excellent series, sees her giving a police superintendent an icy stare for his lack of manners. No matter what the life-and-death crisis, there's no reason not to be polite, is there? [[Russian Roulette by Sara Sheridan|Full Review]]
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===[[The Murder of Harriet Monkton by Elizabeth Haynes]]===
[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Crime (Historical)|Crime (Historical)]], [[:Category:True Crime|True Crime]]
''But that's just it'', she said. ''It's ''not'' Harriet, is it? Not our Harriet. It's some manufactured creature, that exists only for this blessed inquest: something to be summed up like a spirit, to be examined and pored over, to be sneered at and judged. Harriet deserves to be remembered as she was to us, not picked at like carrion.''
And that was the problem: it seemed that there were two Harriets. There was the one her friends - a fellow teacher, her would-be lover, her seducer and the man who was her landlord who was also her lover - knew. Some spoke of her as kindly, virtuous and pious, but that was before her body was found behind the chapel which she regularly attended in Bromley. She'd been poisoned - or had taken her own life. After the inquest was opened another Harriet would emerge, one who was about six months pregnant and who had obviously not been living the chaste life expected of a young, unmarried woman in 1843. [[The Murder of Harriet Monkton by Elizabeth Haynes|Full Review]]
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===[[Greeks Bearing Gifts: Bernie Gunther Thriller 13 by Philip Kerr]]===
[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Crime (Historical)|Crime (Historical)]], [[:Category:Thrillers|Thrillers]]
Set in Germany in 1957, ''Greeks Bearing Gifts'' is a historical crime thriller with everything from dodgy Nazi past histories to insurance fraud. Bernie Gunther is a Berliner, who was a sarjeant during the second world war and now, in this novel, is working in the morgue of a hospital. He finds himself embroiled in a mystery, taking on a new role as an insurance claims investigator. The investigation takes him to Greece, and back into the dark times of the war. With layered plots and double-crossing left, right and centre, there's lots to keep you guessing throughout this story. [[Greeks Bearing Gifts: Bernie Gunther Thriller 13 by Philip Kerr|Full Review]]
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===[[Pandora's Boy by Lindsey Davis]]===
[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Crime (Historical)|Crime (Historical)]]
Relax, die-hard fans of Falco and his spirited British daughter Albia. Rome continues to be as splendid and as sordid as it ever was, the crimes committed are as complex and intriguing, and our heroine just as determined and cynical, with that light dusting of humour which made tales of her father's exploits so engaging. Newcomers to the series need not fear, by the way: each book contains just enough background detail to make you feel immediately at home. This time, despite some serious misgivings, Albia is investigating the sudden death of a fifteen-year-old girl, described as bright, affectionate and popular. Was she poisoned by an illegal love-potion, or did she die of a broken heart? [[Pandora's Boy by Lindsey Davis|Full Review]] [[Pandora's Boy by Lindsey Davis|Full Review]]
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===[[Death in the Stars (Kate Shackleton Mysteries) by Frances Brody]]===
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Crime (Historical)|Crime (Historical)]]
Much as it did in 1999, eclipse fever gripped the country in 1927, but private investigator Kate Shackleton couldn't understand why theatre star Selina Fellini had approached her for help when it seemed that all she needed was for a flight to be arranged to take her from Leeds to Giggleswick School, where she was to view the eclipse. Surely she didn't need a sleuth for this? Kate went ahead and organised the flight, which collected Fellini, comic Billy Moffatt and Kate from Soldiers' Field in Leeds and landed them at the school in good time. It was obvious that the singer was worried about something, but she didn't seem able to explain what it was. [[Death in the Stars (Kate Shackleton Mysteries) by Frances Brody|Full Review]]
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===[[Lawless and the House of Electricity by William Sutton]]===
[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Crime (Historical)|Crime (Historical)]]
Campbell Lawless is back, this time tasked with solving a series of terrorist attacks across the nation. Is it the work of the French, as police and public are being led to believe, or someone closer to home? Who can be trusted and what does Roxbury, an innovative inventor previously disgraced, have to do with the bombs used to cause chaos across the country? Employing the services of Molly, the effervescent ragamuffin from his previous adventures, he sets in motion a campaign of subterfuge which uncovers long held secrets, skulduggery and the desperate yearnings beneath Roxbury's constant invention. [[Lawless and the House of Electricity by William Sutton|Full Review]]
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