Historic Whodunits: Murder Mysteries Set in the Past
By Mary Kay McBrayer
Period dramas are magical—not only because everything is more beautiful, but because the parameters for solving crimes are completely different. Expanded, really. I mean, how easy was it to get away with stuff before DNA evidence, surveillance footage, or even cell phones?
The limited technology of a historical murder means that the detectives must be that much more skilled.
That is, if the detectives are moral people, and if we don’t factor in the classism, sexism, racism, and other prejudices that could, historically, be used as evidence. Don’t even get me going on phrenology.
Historical crime fiction is a whole different, fascinating world, and here are four novels that will likely fascinate you.
Best friends and cousins Grace and Lillie attend the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair together, but they have completely different approaches to it. Lillie invited Grace, whose social status plummeted thanks to her mother marrying for love instead of wealth, and Grace wants to climb back into the high ranks. But when one of Lillie’s group gets murdered among the miniature cream-colored palaces, Grace learns that the social elite aren’t as golden as they seem.
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around November 4, 2025. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Freddie Archer has what I consider the very best job. She writes a nightlife column for New York’s 1925 Gotham Magazine. Basically, she’s a perpetual socialite’s plus-one, and then she reports back on the gossip. But when a man she mentions in her article is murdered, the police enlist her to help find his fashionable female friend… but they also say to stay out of the case herself. No crime fiction journalist character can do that, though—so she throws herself into the investigation headlong, and we get to watch her prowl through the NYC of 1925 while she races to uncover the culprit. Like I said, best job ever.
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This book is a “tête-bêche,” meaning it has two unique crime stories arranged head to toe. When you finish the first, you flip the book over and begin again on the second. In the England of the 1880s, Parson Oliver Hawes of Turnglass House off the coast is convinced he’s being poisoned by his sister-in-law Florence, who was declared mad after murdering his brother, and whom Hawes keeps locked in a glass-walled apartment. In the 1930s, author Oliver Tooke is found dead by suicide. His friend is not convinced, especially after he discovers the secret imprisonment of Oliver’s mother, Florence. The friend has to follow clues in Oliver’s last book, a tête-bêche itself, to learn the truth. The tales are inextricable.
Format
Trade Paperback
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around December 2, 2025. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
Thomas De Quincy is a famous memoirist in Victorian London, famous for his book Confessions of an English Opium Eater. Despite his substance addiction, or maybe because of it, he’s the main suspect in a series of murders that occurred forty-three years earlier. Mostly because one of his essays, “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts” seems to be the instruction manual for the killings. His daughter and two Scotland Yard detectives help the muddled addicted author to clear his name… if they can.
Format
Trade Paperback
This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around June 10, 2014. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.
