I am a former history major and teacher who has always loved to read histories and mysteries and then went on to write them as well. I have two mystery series of four books each (so far), the Mainely Mysteryand Clay Wolfe/Port Essex series.I’ve also written three historical fiction books about the diverse topics of Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution, Joshua Chamberlain and the Civil War, and New Orleans during Reconstruction. I’ve decided to combine my passion for histories and mysteries into a historical PI mystery set in 1923 Brooklyn,Velma Gone Awry.
Award-winning author Matt Cost brings us back to Brooklyn in the Roaring ’20s and introduces us to Hungarian private eye, 8 Ballo, who is hired to find the daughter of a wealthy businessman. The search will lead him to cross paths with Dorothy Parker, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Bugsy Siegel, Babe Ruth, and many more as he tries to uncover why Velma went awry.
Now, in his mid-thirties, 8 is a college-educated man, a veteran of the Great War, jilted in love, and has his own private investigator business. He enjoys his friends, a good book, jazz music, and a very simple life. When he is hired to find the young flapper daughter of a German businessman, life suddenly becomes much more complicated.
The Gods of Gotham is a richly layered mystery set in 1845 New York City, where Timothy Wilde, as a member of the recently established police department, searches for a serial killer. The prose is sumptuous and casts you back into the time period as if an actual time traveler. Faye develops a gripping tale set amidst a real place, as well as people and events that fascinated me. It is a combination of history and mystery that blends two of my loves and kept me rapt into the pages.
'Spectacular' Gillian Flynn. GODS OF GOTHAM is the fantastic first novel in Lyndsay Faye's Edgar Award-nominated series, for fans of Andrew Taylor and Antonia Hodgson's The Devil in the Marshalsea.
August 1845 in New York; enter the dark, unforgiving city underworld of the legendary Five Points...
After a fire decimates a swathe of lower Manhattan, and following years of passionate political dispute, New York City at long last forms an official Police Department. That same summer, the great potato famine hits Ireland. These events will change the city of New York for ever.
This book is a ferociously fast-paced mystery set in 1949 California after a brief stop in Reno. Archer is the quintessential loner PI in the vein of Marlowe and Spade. Although not really a gambling man at all, he gets his stake winning money at craps and roulette in Reno, as well as meeting the intriguing Liberty. In Baldacci fashion, there is action on almost every page, the prose is tight and well-constructed, and the twists keep you guessing. This is definitely at the top of my list for recent historical mysteries and promises to entertain.
Aloysius Archer, the straight-talking World War II veteran fresh out of prison, returns in this riveting #1 New York Times bestselling thriller from David Baldacci.
The 1950s are on the horizon, and Archer is in dire need of a fresh start after a nearly fatal detour in Poca City. So Archer hops on a bus and begins the long journey out west to California, where rumor has it there is money to be made if you’re hard-working, lucky, criminal—or all three.
Along the way, Archer stops in Reno, where a stroke of fortune delivers him a wad of cash and…
The Alienistcaptivates right from the beginning with two marvelous characters. The mystery, set in 1890’s New York City, is told through the journalist character of John Schuyler Moore. This is groundbreaking as many current mysteries have a protagonist of investigative reporter, but Moore is the first I know of. The central character is really Dr. Laszlo Kreizler who is also avant-garde in that he is a phycologist who studies the mind and uses this knowledge to track down a serial killer. Think Hannibal Lecter without eating people.
The internationally bestselling historical thriller, now a major Netflix series starring Luke Evans, Dakota Fanning and Daniel Bruhl.
Some things never change.
New York City, 1896. Hypocrisy in high places is rife, police corruption commonplace, and a brutal killer is terrorising young male prostitutes.
Unfortunately for Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, the psychological profiling of murderers is a practice still in its infancy, struggling to make headway against the prejudices of those who prefer the mentally ill - and the 'alienists' who treat them - to be out of sight as well as out of mind.
This is a fun-filled mystery set in 1920s London. Cozies are not usually my thing, but I recently gave this a go as I am also writing a series in that exact time period and thought I’d see how Kinsey set about it. The historical beautifully captures the exuberance of the time period after World War I. Women have emerged from behind closed doors to interact on equal status as men, jazz music parades the pages with wild abandon, and the slang of the characters is spot on. The twists, turns, and action are blended in with the rich description to make this a delightful read.
Missing diamonds. Mysterious deaths. And all that jazz.
London, 1925. With their band the Dizzy Heights, jazz musicians Ivor 'Skins' Maloney and Bartholomew 'Barty' Dunn are used to improvising as they play the Charleston for flappers and toffs, but things are about to take a surprising turn.
Superintendent Sunderland has had word that a deserter who stole a fortune in diamonds as he fled the war is a member of the Aristippus private members' club in Mayfair-where the Dizzy Heights have a residency. And the thief is planning to steal a hoard of jewels hidden there under the cover of…
The Maltese Falcon is the prototype for a historical PI mystery, even if it was written in 1929, the time that it took place. Sam Spade is the PI that generations of writers emulated with their protagonists. He is a wise cracking tough guy with his own set of principles that don’t always stack up the same as the law. Where he is stark, black, and white in a tumultuous time, the supporting cast is a colorized version of glittering personalities that gives flavor to a mystery full of plot twists and layers of deceit, lies, and corruption.
One of the greatest crime novels of the 20th century.
'His name remains one of the most important and recognisable in the crime fiction genre. Hammett set the standard for much of the work that would follow' Independent
Sam Spade is hired by the fragrant Miss Wonderley to track down her sister, who has eloped with a louse called Floyd Thursby. But Miss Wonderley is in fact the beautiful and treacherous Brigid O'Shaughnessy, and when Spade's partner Miles Archer is shot while on Thursby's trail, Spade finds himself both hunter and hunted: can he track down the jewel-encrusted bird, a…
Creative expression has been one of my most cherished values since childhood. I've always had a creative hobby of some kind since I was a kid. Not sure how that happened – my parents were tolerant of my interests at best. I made my day job career in the arts, fostering the creativity of community members and supporting the work of artists. Art (in the general sense of all forms of creative expression) is, to me, a defining characteristic of humanity, it makes life worth living, and the way it’s devalued under Capitalism both saddens and inspires me as a creator myself. I’m a writer of speculative fiction and I write about creative people.
Hunted by those who want to study his gravity powers, Jes makes his way to the best place for a mixed-species fugitive to blend in: the pleasure moon where everyone just wants to be lost in the party. It doesn’t take long for him to catch the attention of the crime boss who owns the resort-casino where he lands a circus job, and when the boss gets wind of the bounty on Jes’ head, he makes an offer: do anything and everything asked of him or face vivisection.
With no other options, Jes fulfills the requests: espionage, torture, demolition. But when the boss sets the circus up to take the fall for his about-to-get-busted narcotics operation, Jes and his friends decide to bring the mobster down. And if Jes can also avoid going back to being the prize subject of a scientist who can’t wait to dissect him? Even better.
Hunted by those who want to study his gravity powers, Jes makes his way to the best place for a mixed-species fugitive to blend in: the pleasure moon where everyone just wants to be lost in the party. It doesn't take long for him to catch the attention of the crime boss who owns the resort-casino where he lands a circus job, and when the boss gets wind of the bounty on Jes' head, he makes an offer: do anything and everything asked of him or face vivisection.
With no other options, Jes fulfills the requests: espionage, torture, demolition. But…
