Travel Back in Crime: Historical Mysteries and Thrillers
By Erin Roll
Historical mysteries are one of the biggest and most popular sub-genres of mysteries and thrillers.
The present day is a very limited timeframe: today, or this month, or this year. But with the past, you have thousands of years’ worth of historical periods to choose from. And while some things change with the passage of time, three things certainly haven’t. One is the desire for one person to murder another. The other is the desire to seek justice. And the third, of course, is readers’ fascination with stories of crime, murder, and the hunt for a criminal.
Like their set-in-the-present counterparts, historical mysteries run the gamut from cozy and whimsical, to witty and sarcastic, to dark, gritty, and terrifying.
Historical mysteries also present an opportunity for the author to explore certain events going on during the novel’s timeframe, or to provide commentary on social or political issues of the day. The Sarah Woolson mysteries set in late nineteenth-century San Francisco look at the obstacles women faced in being allowed to practice law, along with the legal options women had (or didn’t have) in owning property or obtaining a divorce.
Elizabeth Peters’s Amelia Peabody books, set in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Egypt and England, have been popular since the release of the first book in 1975.
Lindsey Davis gave readers Marcus Didius Falco, a “private informer” in ancient Rome, and a follow-up series with Falco’s adopted daughter Flavia Albia.
Peter Tremayne’s Sister Fidelma series and Cora Harrison’s My Lady Judge series both look at the legal system in Ireland: the former in 660, and the latter almost a thousand years later.
Sometimes an author will have their fictional sleuths interact with real-life historical figures, or a character from a well-known novel set in that time period. It could be argued that the latter has the effect of making the novel a work of fanfiction as well. Or sometimes their main character and sleuth will be a real-life historical figure or a well-known fictional character.
The summer of 1961 was a hot one in the little town of New Bremen, Minnesota: a town that should be one of those peaceful, idyllic places where nothing bad happens. This is the town that thirteen-year-old Frank Drum calls home with his minister father, his mother, his older sister, and his younger brother. One day, a little boy is struck and killed by a freight train, and that becomes the first of many deaths to visit the town. Frank and his family find themselves beset by tragedy after tragedy, and the secrets and betrayals threaten to tear the family apart for good.
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Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy are settling in nicely to married life at Pemberley, and are looking forward to holding a grand ball at the manor. But the domestic bliss is shattered the night before the ball when a carriage comes barrelling through the manor gates. It is Elizabeth’s estranged sister, Lydia, in a state of panic. A search of the grounds leads to Lydia’s husband, the reprobate George Wickham, standing by the dead body of Captain Martin Denny, and Wickham insists that Denny’s death is all his fault. It falls to Elizabeth and Darcy to look into the events surrounding Denny’s death, and to untangle a twisted web of secrets and betrayal.
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An Italian cargo ship is wrecked on the south coast of England, through the machinations of “land pirates:” people who set lanterns on the shore to lead ships to a wreck. The cargo vanishes, and because this could lead to serious diplomatic complications between England and Italy, Geoffrey Chaucer – diplomat, writer, and sleuth – is sent in to investigate. But before too long, Chaucer finds that he is dealing not just with stolen cargo but a murder as well in a prominent local family.
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Lady Charlotte Lovett finds herself in a bit of a sticky situation when she is engaged to Viscount Hawley. The viscount is twice widowed, and popular gossip has it that his previous wives didn’t die from natural causes. Charlotte realized that the only way out of the engagement is to prove once and for all that Hawley is as bad as rumor says he is, and she finds an unexpected ally in Dr. Matthew Talbot, Hawley’s brother who has some secrets of his own. But their partnership puts them at risk of some unexpected romantic feelings, to say nothing of a dangerous showdown with Hawley.
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This thrilling novel sees Sherlock Holmes team up with Henry James on a transatlantic mystery. In 1885, Clover Adams, wife of historian John Adams (and a relative of presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams) was found dead in what appeared to be suicide. But there may be more to Clover’s death than people suspected, including national secrets. Eight years later, Holmes (on his Great Hiatus after his fight with Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls) and James arrive in America to do their own investigation. Both men find themselves coping with an existential crisis: a fear that they may in fact be fictional personages from books. And an old enemy may be lurking in the shadows, playing the part of a puppet master.
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In 1819 England, Thomas Shield, a traumatized veteran of the Battle of Waterloo, now ekes out a living as a teacher at a boys’ school near London. Shields is protective of his pupils, in particular two boys: Charles Frant, the son of a prominent banker, and a young American boy who will eventually grow up to be Edgar Allan Poe. Shields, and his young charges, soon find themselves drawn into the center of a bizarre web of occurrences: a bank collapse, the disappearance of two men, romantic entanglements with a society widow and her equally attractive cousin, and a mysterious stranger who seems to be obsessed with finding Edgar and his foster family.
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The year 1903 finds the Emerson-Peabody family in Egypt once again. Amelia has had a dream about a large cat, which is a symbol of good luck. But any hopes of good luck are called into question when Emerson receives a warning to stay away from a certain tomb. Later, an excavation team discovers a mummy in the tomb in question, but it is an unusual one: a young woman wearing present-day clothing. It becomes clear that the mummy is that of a woman who went missing some years before, and that she was murdered. It is up to Amelia and her family to determine what happened to the dead woman, while evading all manner of deceit, treachery, and attempts on their own lives.
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Erin Roll is a freelance writer, editor, and proofreader. Her favorite genres to read are mystery, science fiction, and fantasy, and her TBR pile is likely to be visible on Google Maps. Before becoming an editor, Erin worked as a journalist and photographer, and she has won far too many awards from the New Jersey Press Association.Erin lives at the top floor of a haunted house in Montclair, NJ. She enjoys reading (of course), writing, hiking, kayaking, music, and video games.
