I confess to a life-long interest in both the Victorian era and in crime, and I blame my dad for both. Dad was a Cleveland Police detective who introduced me to the Holmes stories at an early age. We read Doyle and we both enjoyed Basil Rathbone’s take on Sherlock in the old black-and-white movies. Dad also gave me my first chance to practice my detecting skills when on his days off, he’d load me into the car, buy me an ice cream cone (no doubt to keep me quiet), and take me for a cruise around the city looking for stolen cars.
I wrote
Of Manners and Murder: A Dear Miss Hermione Mystery
I clearly remember the first time I opened a copy of this book. I was riding an exercise bike and looking for a distraction. Boy, did I find it!
This is the book that proved to me that mysteries can be funny as well as intelligent. The heroine, Amelia Peabody, is a wonder, an ahead-of-her-times Victorian woman who is both plucky and smart. The man who will become her husband is irascible, irreverent, annoying—and completely adorable!
You don’t have to love ancient history to join these two intrepid archaeologists in Egypt. Come for the mystery. Stay for the history, the atmospheric setting, and a cast of well-drawn, memorable characters. Know that once you start, you will be hooked.
Amelia Peabody is Elizabeth Peters' most brilliant and best-loved creation, a thoroughly Victorian feminist who takes the stuffy world of archaeology by storm with her shocking men's pants and no-nonsense attitude!
In this first adventure, our headstrong heroine decides to use her substantial inheritance to see the world. On her travels, she rescues a gentlewoman in distress - Evelyn Barton-Forbes - and the two become friends. The two companions continue to Egypt where they face mysteries, mummies and the redoubtable Radcliffe Emerson, an outspoken archaeologist, who doesn't need women to help him solve mysteries -- at least that's what he…
I know what you’re thinking. As soon as I say The Five is nonfiction about the victims of Jack the Ripper, you’re going to cringe.
Not to worry, this incredible book is a recounting not of the murders, but of the lives of Polly, Annie, Elisabeth, Catherine, and Mary Jane, victims of history’s most notorious serial killer.
Rubenhold’s extensive and impressive research introduces us to each woman, and the finely crafted prose helps us understand what their lives—and the lives of so many women in Victorian times—were like.
When you read the book (and you’ll thank me for it) don’t miss the afterword that details what each woman had in her pockets when her body was found. The lists are telling as well as moving.
THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NONFICTION 2019 'An angry and important work of historical detection, calling time on the misogyny that has fed the Ripper myth. Powerful and shaming' GUARDIAN
Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers.
What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888.
I will admit it’s been a while since I read this, the first Charlotte and Thomas Pitt mystery.
The fact that I still remember it and include it on this list says something. The mystery is convoluted enough to keep readers interested and the story of the lead characters going against societal norms (young woman from a good family attracted to a “lowly” police inspector) is intriguing.
Throw in the foggy atmosphere of Victorian London and you’ve got a real winner. Be aware, though, Hangman is the first of 32 Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novels.
In the debut of the New York Times–bestselling Victorian crime series, Inspector Thomas Pitt seeks an elusive strangler among upper-class British society.
Panic and fear strike the Ellison household when one of their own falls prey to the Cater Street murderer. While Mrs. Ellison and her three daughters are out, their maid becomes the third victim of a killer who strangles young women with cheese wire, leaving their swollen-faced bodies on the dark streets of this genteel neighborhood. Inspector Pitt, assigned to the case, must break through the walls of upper-class society to get at the truth. His in-depth investigation…
Another nonfiction book and the only one on my list not set in England, Devil in the White City takes readers to Gilded Age Chicago and the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893.
Great storytelling and incredible research introduce readers to the gleaming white exposition city and its ultimate juxtaposition, the World’s Fair Hotel just west of the fairgrounds. The hotel was built by Henry H. Holmes, a young and handsome doctor, who was also a sadistic killer.
Holmes lured women to the hotel, a place complete with a dissection table, a gas chamber, and a crematorium. The horrors of the murder are made all the more real—and creepy—against the background of city leaders, determined architects, and joyous fairgoers.
The Chicago World Fair was the greatest fair in American history. This is the story of the men and women whose lives it irrevocably changed and of two men in particular- an architect and a serial killer. The architect is Daniel Burnham, a man of great integrity and depth. It was his vision of the fair that attracted the best minds and talents of the day. The killer is Henry H. Holmes. Intelligent as well as handsome and charming, Holmes opened a boarding house which he advertised as 'The World's Fair Hotel' Here in the neighbourhood where he was once…
No list of Victorian mysteries would be complete without a tip of the deerstalker to Doyle and the most famous character in fiction, consulting detective Sherlock Holmes.
The Hound, a novel rather than a short story as are so many of the other Holmes stories, is especially atmospheric, drawing on the legends and the dark and brooding ambiance of Dartmoor as well as tales of the supernatural. It makes for some spine-tingling moments and a chance for Holmes to show off his finely honed powers of deduction.
What, you don’t have time to read it? As fun as it is, skip the Benedict Cumberbatch version of this one and watch the PBS production starring Jeremy Brett.
Once night falls, the Victorian vibes will have you listening a little closer for the braying of an enormous hound.
When Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead, his face distorted with shock and horror, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are faced with a sinister and difficult puzzle. A fearsome creature stalks the wild and barren hills of Dartmoor. Is it a demon from the spirit world? Will it defeat their skill and courage? Who is the tall, mysterious figure seen lurking on the moor at night? Can Holmes save Sir Henry, the new owner of Baskerville Hall, from the ancient family curse? Or will the terrifying hound claim yet another victim?
London, 1885: When Violet’s Aunt Adelia absconds with her newest paramour, she leaves her role as the popular Agony Aunt, Miss Hermione, in Violet’s capable hands. But instead of the prissy pondering she expects, Violet finds the first letter she receives is full of portent. Ivy Armstrong fears for her life! When Violet visits the village where the letter was posted, she learns Ivy is already dead.
Violet quickly discovers that when you represent the best-loved Agony Aunt in the Empire, manners—and murder—are all in a day’s work.
I have been to, and loved, North, Central, and especially East Africa for over fifty years. Only six times have I been to Africa on holiday; more often, perhaps twenty or more times, as a television producer. Working in Africa gains a perspective of reality that the glories of vacation do not. Each has its place, each its pitfalls like stalled plane rides with emergency landings in the bush or attacks by wildlife. But, in the end, the magic of the “otherness,” what an old friend called “primitava” captures one’s soul and changes your life.
Keen to rekindle their love of East African wildlife adventures after years of filming, extreme dangers, and rescues, producer Pero Baltazar, safari guide Mbuno Waliangulu, and Nancy Breiton, camerawoman, undertake a filming walking adventure north of Lake Rudolf, crossing from Kenya into Ethiopia along the Omo River, following a herd of elephant making their annual migration.
Stumbling onto an elephant poaching, the team become embroiled in true financing of terrorism for al Shabaab –ivory sales–and are determined to stop the slaughter at any cost. Ivory trade financing terrorism involves UN refugee camps with two hundred thousand displaced Somali persons, powerful…
A documentary team hiking through East Africa collides with a gang of deadly poachers, in this gripping adventure by the author of Kidnapped on Safari.
Years of filming, extreme dangers, and daring rescues have taken their toll on documentary producer Pero Baltazar and his team. To relax and reconnect with the East African wildlife they love, Pero organizes a walking safari for him, his camerawoman Nancy Breiton, and their elite guide Mbuno Waliangulu. Still, Pero has trouble truly disconnecting from work. When the team comes across a herd of elephants making their annual migration north of Lake Rudolf, Pero decides…
