100 books like Act of Oblivion

This is the first in Antonia Hodgson’s so-good-you-could-eat-it Thomas Hawkins series. It’s set in London in 1727 and the plot revolves around a likeable rake, Hawkins, whose dedication to dice, booze, and women leads him to ruin – but with the help of others. Finding himself in the notorious Marshalsea Prison – think Alcatraz but without the water and with leprosy and lice instead – and you have the makings of a wonderful prison-break type story. Hodgson’s characters – Hawkins, but also his love interest, Kitty Sparks – aren’t just alive but bring the past alive with them. It’s like Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones with the vividness of the Sixties, but then, if you know anything about eighteenth-century London, you’ll know that it was pretty wild place. This, after all, was long before the Victorians came along with their rather puritan social mores.

Famous for his crookbacked sleuth Shardlake series, CJ Sansom sets this standalone counter-factual historical thriller in 1950s Britain – one where the United Kingdom had capitulated to Nazi Germany in 1940 (with Lord Halifax and not Winston Churchill becoming prime minister) and has become a German client state. It conjures up the 1950s – the smog, the coal smoke, the tea shops – while sketching out an alternate reality, one which is highly plausible, thereby doing one of the things I love best about historical fiction – showing us how different things could easily have been and shaking us from any complacency. More than this, Dominion is a highly effective thriller, as civil servant David Fitzgerald becomes the man in the middle of a politico-spy page-turner that keeps you guessing till the end.

This is a crime novel set in 1919 Calcutta. We follow Captain Sam Wyndham, who is a former Scotland Yard detective seeking a fresh start after the emotional wounds following WWI and the death of his wife.

When a senior official is murdered, he doesn't hold back during his search from British mansions to seedy opium dens with his new sidekick, Sergeant Banerjee. Rising tensions, the clash of societies, the heat, dirt, and crowding all contribute to bringing this colorful period to life.

This is the debut novel and the first in a remarkably well-told series so interesting I found it impossible to put down. 

Set in the aftermath of the English Civil War; this is the fourth in Andrew Taylor’s bestselling series involving a government agent named James Marwood and his friend, Cat Lovett, who happens to be Oliver Cromwell’s daughter. In The Last Protector 1668 and Marwood and Lovett are on the trail of a mystery that goes back to the days of the republic, one quite literally hidden away in the bowels of the past, but also one which involves a very credible danger to both them individually and society at large. It’s gripping and immersive, and offers delicious personal and political jeopardy right up to the end.

This is the second Matthew Shardlake adventure from the pen of a master craftsman, set at the time of Henry VIII.

I was embroiled in danger alongside the lawyer as he fights to save a girl accused of murder from the hangman’s noose and recover a long-lost ancient secret. I learned that the intriguing machinations going on in a Tudor court of law are as shifty and tangled as those at the royal court in Whitehall.

I visited many a seedy London tavern with side-kick Barak during that searing hot summer of 1540, smelling the sour stink of sweaty humanity as the body count increased and met Shardlake’s nemesis, Richard Rich. Brilliant stuff!    

Andrew Taylor is known for his great mysteries set in the 1600s, but the reason I’m picking this one above his others is the power of the opening and how it draws you into this world.

We’re introduced to a house where two girls are playing with what is effectively a voodoo doll, wishing harm on their master. When something inevitably happens to the master, these girls’ simple game with the doll becomes much more wicked. Who couldn’t be drawn in by such a premise?

Like Samson and Bishop, Taylor takes the reader on an investigation through a city from a different era, but it’s the people in Taylor’s book that make the stakes of this adventure so much higher.

I recently had the pleasure of meeting D V Bishop at CrimeFest in Bristol, and his passion for his stories truly comes through in person.

After picking it up for a friend whose favorite place in the world is Florence, where the book is set, I couldn’t resist reading it myself, and oh, I am glad I did. Three books into the series, and it’s hard to put down. Cesare Aldo is a hero that is mysterious and resilient – a man trying to hide his sexuality in a world where it’s a crime – as he investigates murders in Renaissance Florence.

Like Samson, Bishop masters drawing the reader into becoming attached to the hero, with the book unputdownable. 

Part of the Shakespeare family? Working for Walsingham in the height of the spy era? Who wouldn’t want to read about John Shakespeare!

There are many books in this series, but I’ve picked Martyr in particular as it’s the first, and what an introduction. With the threat of war imminent, and Mary Stuart about to be assassinated, a dark world is created here where it feels like every day that Shakespeare wakes up, he might struggle to keep breathing. What danger!

Once more, Rory Clements creates a world of intrigue that isn’t solely placed at the royal court but opens our eyes to the darker underbelly of the city. This book first got me into this genre many years ago. I could not recommend it enough as a first dip. 

Another meticulously researched work of nonfiction, this book opened my eyes to the connection between real-life murders in Victorian England and the start of the public’s obsession with detective fiction.

As a fan of mysteries and thrillers in which not all characters survive, I was fascinated to see how the genre literally began. I’ve read a bunch of the old serialized tales, the “Penny Dreadfuls” talked about in this book, and I loved seeing them placed into their larger historical and cultural context.

This book is the the first in a gripping and atmospheric wartime thriller series featuring London policeman, Detective Sergeant Troy.

Troy has an unusual background for a police officer in that he is the son of an immensely rich Russian emigré businessman. In this story, set in 1944, a man’s severed arm is found on a bomb site. Troy investigates and discovers the arm belongs to a refugee German scientist working for British intelligence.

This is a marvelous thriller from a writer once selected in a Time all-time list of detective authors to savor.