60 books like A Death of No Importance

Frances lives in the Victorian Era in London, but in her hometown of New York, it’s the Gilded Age. This is her background in all its glittering and horrifying glory. 

Crime novels fit quite naturally in this era. I love a loathsome villain and Rosemary Simpson serves up some of the worst in her Gilded Age series. She uses actual events, like the great blizzard of 1888, as catalysts for some heinous crimes. If you needed to dispose of a body, what better place than a snowdrift? 

Prudence MacKenzie, the dead man’s fiancé and our sleuth, doesn’t seem to realize the danger she’s in. I spent the entire read on the edge of my seat wondering if she’d make it to the end of the book alive. This is historical noir in elegant Gilded Age style.

Sarah Brandt is, in a squirmy twist for her upper-crust Knickerbocker New York City parents, a turn-of-the-century midwife, widowed and curious about everything. Women of her ilk don’t work. She meets Metropolitan Police Force detective Frank Malone and is his answer to prayer as well as his personal torment. The two meet each other uncannily all over town in this series from the Battery to the Bowery to the Bronx and back again; she, ever helpful, he, ever cynical, until their lives collide in a magically different, far more intimate way. The situations are always intriguing and built around impeccable Gilded Age research.

This series is actually set in Newport, Rhode Island but New York’s elite had to have somewhere to go when the summer heat settled on the city. Reporting on all the Newport society news is Emma Cross, second cousin to Cornelius Vanderbilt. I have to admit that I’m fascinated by the lives of these uber-wealthy characters. Their homes, wardrobes, and entertainments are almost shocking in their opulence. I love that many of the characters are real people. In this book, Alva Vanderbilt loses any hope of winning the Mother-of-the-Year award as she browbeats her daughter Consuelo into marrying heir to the Duke of Marlborough. If money can’t buy happiness, maybe a title will.

This novel embraces all the darkest elements of the Gilded Age—the occult, greed, cruelty, and the notorious asylum for the insane on Blackwell’s Island and I’m here for all of it! The sleuth is Amelia Matthews, a psychic who suffered a head injury that both expanded her psychic ability and landed her in Blackwell Asylum. She is not insane, but neither are many of the other women locked up with her—at least not when they first arrived. It’s chilling to know that this really happened to women who were betrayed by their nearest and dearest. Stacie Murphy made me feel like her characters were real, and I wanted justice for them! 

Can I make this list and not include a golden-age detective story set in a country house at Christmas? This one has all the ingredients required for an afternoon by the fire, looking out at the wintry weather—a locked room, an appealing detective, and a cast of people compelled, rather unwisely, to spend Christmas in each other’s company. "If you ask me, there very likely wouldn’t have been a murder at all if it hadn’t been for him getting ideas about peace and goodwill, and assembling all these highly uncongenial people under the same roof at the same time.” 

I like the historical setting of Gentil’s books (mainly 1930s Australia, although her characters venture overseas in a couple of the books) and the original newspaper clippings that introduce the chapters, which give you a glimpse of current affairs that form the backdrop to the story. Personally, I also enjoy the fact that her protagonist is an artist, albeit one with a wealthy family behind him. There’s danger, disapproving family, Blackshirts, unrequited love, and above all, staunch friendships; Rowland and his mates are people you wish you could hang out with. Give the Devil His Due is the seventh book in the Rowland Sinclair series.  

I find the Georgian era fascinating (kinda shows, right?) particularly in the years immediately after Waterloo.

Gardner (a pseudonym for prolific author Jennifer Ashley) presents us with a sleuth who is a former officer recently returned from the war. He’s limping in body and spirit, and the puzzles he solves take us from the slums and alleys to high society, and a lot of interesting places in between.

Lacey is grouchy, astute, sweet, and tenacious, I doubt I will ever tire of reading of his exploits. (And if he’s your jam too, you will doubtless enjoy Gardner’s Gladiator Mysteries, and her Belowstairs Mysteries.) 

I enjoyed this book because it was full of drama, glamour, and a world full of people I wouldn’t usually socialise with. It gave a glimpse into the lives of the super-wealthy as they gathered on a private island at The Club. The novel was told from various viewpoints which kept it interesting and the reader guessing as to who committed the crime. Overall, it was an intriguing, entertaining read – great for a holiday.  

Terrible things happen to the women in this book, but they all, every single one of them, rock the boat to try and make their own lives. In this retelling of The Great Gatsby that centers the POVs of three women critical to the story (Jordan Baker, Daisy Buchanan, and Myrtle Wilson’s suffragist sister), we get the story that was always hiding between the lines.

I found myself proud of and mourning the lives of each of these women. I felt furious on their behalf and hopeful that the generations that came after them would reap the benefits of their mistakes and their work. 

Perhaps most surprising to me, I found myself wanting to know these women more than I ever, ever wanted to get to know Gatsby’s world. 

Set in Victorian England, this novel is a sinister, gothic tale based on the ability of a young woman to read the souls of man-made objects and the disappearance of a young man drawn to the occult. I loved how this book was grounded in the real Victorian London and yet managed to incorporate gorgeously gothic supernatural elements as well as a love triangle involving well-drawn and believable characters. For me, the writing was what really drew me in and I have to admire anyone who can weave historical and fantastical elements as beautifully as this author.