bookheaven | Entries tagged with historical mysteries

The Tomb of Zeus by Barbara Cleverly

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A 3.5 read that I didn't round up mostly because of some personal issues with the main character and the imbalance between solving a mystery and the other plot line. Letty is one of the 'modern women' in the 1920s and is off to make her mark in the world of archaeology. To that end, she's in Crete, taken on by Theodore Russell on the advice of Letty's mentor. He is rushing to out do Arthur Evans and discover the titular tomb and isn't going to turn down help. That said he's also not really happy to have a woman so he plants her somewhere she might find some small artifacts and gives her diggers he's irritated with.

On her first day, Letty meets Phoebe, Theo's much younger wife, George his kind hearted son and Gunning, a man she already knows who had been set as a babysitter earlier on in a different setting by her father. There is so much past history referenced that I thought there were previous books. And that's where I get annoyed with Letty. She's constantly blowing hot and cold with Gunning (an ex soldier from WWI with war wounds) and she's also either gung-ho or quailing so it got annoying fast.

Phoebe meets an untimely end but is it suicide as she has reasons? Letty doesn't believe it and neither does Marianni the detective. So there is some imbalance that happens as Letty works on the mystery and the whole archeology thing falls into the background for far too long.

The mystery however is nicely done. Phoebe's past, George's too set up the clues and red herrings well and the past has everything to do with this, right down to the history of Crete itself (though this book also started out on a sour note for me because it had an author's note, condemning the colonialism/ take over of Crete by other people which is good but then goes on to say how gentle England tread on the Island which really isn't that true. The museum took far more than its fair share of artifacts from Crete. I think she was trying to reference the Ottoman empire and a real world slaughter that happened but it came off badly, though that slaughter plays a role in this)

Would I read another one? I probably would. Letty wasn't awful, just a bit annoying. I love that we had an archaeologist detective that isn't in Egypt for a change.

View all my reviews

Current Mood: busy

cornerofmadness

The Seance Society by Michael Nethercott

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This one is a 3.5 star read for me because it didn't feel particularly grounded in its time period. Without O'Nelligan's musical references it's easy to forget this is set in the late 1950s. Lee Plunkett is a reluctant PI, having inherited the job from his former policeman turned PI father. How he and O'Nelligan hooked up we don't know but O'Nelligan is an older mentor slash Watson type. Into this mix is Audrey Lee's long time finance who is getting tired of waiting for him to pull the trigger on that wedding date.

O'Nelligan brings the case to Lee, Trexlar Lloyd is a wealthy spiritualist and inventor who claims to have built a machine, the Spectricator to talk to ghosts but instead it electrocutes him and the Detective Agnelli isn't sure that the coroner is right that it an accident especially since Dr. Emmitt was also a friend/client of Trex's.

The household is filled with odd characters, Constanza Lloyd, his young spanish wife now widow who must return to Spain if she wants to inherit, the unlikeable Dr. Kemple who is in the ghost business too, Trowbridge the butler, Rast the groundskeeper, Doris the secretary/ right hand woman, Sassafras a former speakeasy owner Mae West type, young cousins Betty and Kate who were serving girls, Mrs. Mapes a client who also sees ghosts, a married couple looking for their son who died in WWII and Mrs Perris the cook.

Was Trex killed was it an accident and if he was killed why? I guessed the first half of the equation pretty early on and the final end was a bit harder as all of them had a good motive and opportunity.

I did like the characters and the mystery well enough. I just wish the setting had been hammered home a bit better.

View all my reviews

Current Mood: rushed

cornerofmadness

To Slip the Bonds of Earth (Katharine Wright, #1)

To Slip the Bonds of Earth by Amanda Flower

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am lucky to get to see the author at the Ohioana Book Festival yearly and got this one from her there. I have a love hate relationship with what is essentially real person fanfic adjacent. Usually it's hate. I like the idea but not the execution but I'm happy to say here I enjoyed both. One of the discussion questions was did I know the Wright Brothers had sister before the book. Honestly, no and now I do want to look her up which if that's all I took away from this, that's awesome enough.

Of course there is the whole mitigation of some of the tension in real person as sleuths mysteries because we know that XYZ didn't happen (unless this is also alternative history which it's not). So when Orville and Wilbur return to Dayton from Kitty Hawk for the holidays and Orville loses documents with notes for their flying machine, the idea that someone will beat them to the punch you know it didn't happen.

And that is the motivation here, in part. Katharine is a teacher at a school, wanting to teach Greek but being passed over by less qualified men. She is teaching Latin and Benny, son of Randolph Shaw, paper mill magnate, is giving her problems so she claps back. She plans to talk to his mother at the Shaw's mansion at the Christmas party she was invited to. Orville goes with her. He's humiliated by Hermann who ends up dead with Orville's screwdriver in his chest and Orville's drawing have been stolen from his jacket. Benny is there covered in blood.

Naturally Benny is arrested and Katharine really isn't investigating that, though she is concerned about her student (pain in the butt as he is). She's investigating the loss of her brother's drawings. Of course these two things dovetail.

I liked Katharine as a character and the other characters original and actual were both very good. The mystery was satisfying and I'd like to see more of this. Also I plan to go poke around Dayton (I don't live that far away) as I haven't investigated it well.

View all my reviews

Current Mood: blah
Current Music: Yellowstone 1923

cornerofmadness

Murder on Marble Row (Gaslight Mystery, #6)

Murder on Marble Row by Victoria Thompson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This 3.5 read got rounded up as I'm coming into a series with book 6. (This came to me in a neat way as a gift your gifter tells the company your tea/reading preferences and they select a tea cup/tea/used book) So maybe I wouldn't have had a few issues I did because I wasn't as familiar with Sarah and Malloy's relationship.

This is set during Teddy Roosevelt's term of being the big boss of the police enacting tons of reforms so late 1800s early 1900s and he's assigned Frank Malloy to investigate the bomb related death of a wealthy business man Van Dyke. They believe it is anarchists often referring to the stabbing of Henry Frick (me sitting here smiling at the irony as I was just at Frick's house here in Pittsburgh) That his son Creighton has taken up with the anarchists after falling in love with one of them only strengthens this thought process.

Sarah doesn't believe her childhood friend is capable of blowing up his own father and starts to try to help (my biggest issue is how annoyed Malloy is with Sarah but if I'm honest that is exactly what would have happened especially in this time period). Being a midwife to the poor immigrants, Sarah has an in with the people on the lower east side so she can get to the anarchists to question them more easily than a police man could.

And there is no dearth of suspects. Van Dyke was not a nice man. Neither is his business partner (and they hated each other), his financial advisor has reasons too as he's in love with Alberta, Van Dyke's daughter (way above the man's station), his younger drunken spoiled son, Tad and the man's young wife who sleeps around, and of course, the anarchists.

To be honest, I knew exactly who had placed the bomb from the autopsy forward but I still enjoyed the mystery. Sarah is a fun character. Malloy's not bad. I would read more of this.

View all my reviews

Current Mood: distressed
Current Music: Loony Tunes

cornerofmadness

Who Cries for the Lost (Sebastian St. Cyr, #18)

Who Cries for the Lost by C.S. Harris

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This remains one of my favorite historical mysteries. This one I enjoyed more than the one proceeding it as it was less tied into actual historical events where we know the outcomes (Yes, Napoleon attacking again is the backdrop but it's not wound that tightly up into it.)

Major Miles Sedgewick has been found murdered and castrated and naturally Sebastian is involved with the case because a) Miles and he were in the same unit though he didn't like the guy b) His best friend who functions as the coroner in these, Paul Gibson is suspected of the killing because his lover Alexi Sauvage was tricked into a bigamist marriage by Miles and then dumped once she nursed him back to health.

The formula really does show in this one but yet it doesn't feel like too bad a thing
1. Hero will help and also help Harris shine a light on social justice issues
2. Sebastian will dress up as a poor man and get into a fight and/or get his family threatened
3. Hero's father will be lurking in the shadows and be in the way/or involved somehow but ultimately helps Sebastian somehow
4. Hendon will be disapproving of his son but also ultimately helpful
5. Sebastian's gossipy old aunt will have some clue
6. Ditto Kat Sebastian's ex-lover and actual daughter of Hendon
7. Lovejoy will be there to enable Sebastian (including dealing with any self defense killings) but ultimately not be that helpful in solving the case.

Every last part of the formula is in this but it doesn't feel too tired (Kat does. She has annoyed me for 18 books now). I am wondering if we're ever going to see the other shoe drop with Hero's cousin/step mom who does deliver a boy which might have implications for Hero down the line. Hero is also pregnant again but that isn't slowing her down.

As for Miles, he was interest even if you're vaguely glad someone sliced off his privates. He had a habit of seducing women including friends wives. If they were pregnant serving girls they got whipped out to die in the street. On the other hand he has a deep interest in folklore and witch craft which I enjoyed that subplot. It included the three weird sisters (named for the Shakespearean witches) and their tarot shop.

I also liked that Sebastian's injury from last book was not forgotten. It plagues him in this book and keeps him from signing up to go fight Napoleon (in spite of having two boys depending on him and a baby on the way, which I'm not sure how I feel about that).

I'm looking forward to what comes next for them.

View all my reviews

Current Mood: busy

cornerofmadness

A Botanist's Guide to Parties and Poisons (Saffron Everleigh Mystery, #1)

A Botanist's Guide to Parties and Poisons by Kate Khavari

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had been wanting to read this one for a good while and it was a 3.5 read for me that I rounded up because I did like Saffron and especially Alexander a lot. However, Saffron's poor decision making almost had me DNFing this early on until I remembered there was precedence for it. And my copy didn't have the blurb mentioning it was 1923 and I was struggling with time period. I could tell it was post WWI and pre WWII but that's a big time period so I wish there was a more solid setting in the book itself.

Saffron is a young scientist, a botanist following in her father's footsteps. He was lost in the war. I suppose as someone with multiple degrees in science I felt a kinship with her. She of course faces misogyny and prejudice against her gender but has a champion in Dr. Maxwell whose paternal role in her life means a lot. However at a faculty party celebrating the upcoming trip to the Amazon to explore, the philandering Dr. Henry's wife was poisoned and is in a coma and Maxwell is the suspect.

Saffron needs him back. She also cares about him as a person and knows he couldn't have done this but someone has gone to lengths to make it look like a plant he'd brought back from Mexico and cultivates in the university greenhouse could be responsible. (also as someone who has poisonous plants in the university greenhouse, I relate) About the only person on her side is Alexander Ashton who is a microbiologist who will be on the trip. The department chair is Dr Berking, Mr. sleep with me and I'll advance your career (and threw me into flashbacks of getting my medical residency, exactly 70 years after this is set), is going to be of no help.

As Saffron starts to investigate, Alexander is drawn in. He has a lot of potential as a character beyond the mere love interest aspect. He was in WWI, was injured in the war and has PTSD (managing with meditation among other things). She feels she has to prove Maxwell's plant couldn't be responsible so she does an experiment and this is where I nearly DNFed it.

Then I remember 1) it's the 1920s 2) plenty of doctors/scientists used themselves as guinea pigs 3) yes it's still stupid 4) this is WHY we have the research guidelines and protections we do today. So I got passed that. However I did wish Saffron would have made less wild theories. She's a scientist. I would have liked to have seen more scientific method (hypothesis, data collection etc) from her.

And of course the ending required her to do the dumb thing she did or it wouldn't have worked so there's that. I do like however how they ended it and the set up she gets from it at the end. I'd like to see more of Saffron.

View all my reviews

Current Mood: blah

cornerofmadness

Execution Dock by Anne Perry

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I haven't read a Monk book in a long time (I was reading mom's collection when she suddenly donated part of it without telling me so I'm sure I missed a few here) and this honestly isn't her best effort. The whole beginning felt like a bad Law & Order episode where you know what's going to happen, Monk and Hester's friend, the lawyer Oliver Rathbone, uses his knowledge of them to acquit a pedophilic pimp who murdered one of his boys. Phillips obviously has dirt on someone close to Rathbone who has taken the case for his father in law.

The whole thing moves like a train never leaving the rails. From the onset of the post-trial (which took nearly 80 pages that were as dry as unbuttered toast) Monk and Hester (actually this is much more her story) fight to find another way to hang Phillips with the aid of the young mudlark, Scruff, who is living with them to keep him safe from Phillips.

Predicting Phillips is going to try and blacken Monk's name and threaten Scruff does not need a crystal ball. Durban, Monk's mentor in the river police (which is where I know I missed several books because I had no idea about this) is another target even though he's dead. In fact all the river police are under threat of being disbanded as corrupt (and helping Phillips since that's the story he and his wealthy powerful pedophiles are putting out)

There isn't a lot of mystery here. I was annoyed when a side character has to act foolish in order to get that final piece (a character that's barely been in the story up until that point). The ending came in a rush, a bit too pat.

View all my reviews

Current Mood: lazy

cornerofmadness

The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies (The Ill-Mannered Ladies, #1)

The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies by Alison Goodman

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

If the Popsugar challenge hadn't issued a hard to find prompt of a character who's 42 I probably would have walked away from this. I can't begin to say how deeply disappointed I was (and I don't usually review books that I'm this disappointed with but since it was for the challenge) I was SO looking forward to this. Historical mysteries are one of my most favorite subgenres (I have nearly 200 of them reviewed here. This is my 4th one of the year and we're only 6 weeks in)

My problem? Gus & the book's focus. The main character annoyed me. Gus and her twin Julia are supposed to be smart. Gus is too arrogant for that and makes dumb choices (especially at a time when one small mistake could 'ruin' a woman and if you were cast out in this highly overromanticized time period, you were going to end up dead, prostituted or put into a work house) There were several TSTL moments, too many for me. For instance, Gus's big plan to rescue a woman from her husband was to go in, tell them who she and Julia were and then sneak her out. She TOLD him their real names. It's not until dozens of pages later do we get clued in that she had planned to have an even higher ranking aristocrat give her an alibi (by then I thought she was an idiot) and she does this not thinking things out thing multiple times.

Now for the focus. The blurb leads you to believe Gus is going to try and help clear Lord Belford's name. He was convicted of murder (during a duel) and transported to New Zealand 20 years ago. They meet as he tries to rob her on her way to save the aforementioned wife and Gus shoot him (she is more violent than most historical sleuths and I'm okay with that). I struggled to look past the insta-love Gus has for him (he tried to rob you at gun point but yeah he helps you later but still...) when we had nearly 500 pages that we could have built to that.

But that is not the book's focus (and mild spoiler alert, not something that is cleared up) Instead it feels like Goodman found out so many atrocities visited upon women in the early 1800s that she had to include them all in this. There are three separate cases, each a different atrocity (all set against the background of how worthless she and Julia are as they never married and reproduced like a good little girl). So rather than focus on one or two of these and save something for the series (which this will be) it's all shoe horned in with judgy, self righteous Gus. I won't be around for more.

View all my reviews

Current Mood: bored

cornerofmadness

Murder by Degrees by Ritu Mukerji

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

TSVM to Netgalley for the arc of this. This one had personal intersections with my own life (the history of women in medicine is part of my research and I am a female physician) Dr. Lydia Weston is a pioneer in the field, practicing and teaching at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (again a school part of my research which made me so happy). She becomes worried about Anna, a young maid who is both her patient and someone Lydia is trying to help up in society via education. Anna was acting weird and has stopped coming to see her.

She relates her concerns to her benefactors Harlan and Anthea (both doctors) and he introduces her to his friend detective Volker and his junior, Davies. It seems Anna has met with an unfortunate end and Lydia helps them by talking to some of Anna's friends while the detectives do their best to unravel a case, they weren't sure wasn't actually suicide by drowning. Once the autopsy proves it's murder, they have to navigate the waters shaped by large class disparity when not one but two very wealthy families have ties to the girl. It's a race to discover what happened before Lydia herself is the next victim.

I very much liked Lydia (and the detectives). I thought there was a nice balance between her seeing patients, the medical details, the ties to India and her childhood and most of all her going up against and winning against her male colleagues. I know how dead set against women doctors some of my own colleagues were in 1990. I can't imagine the hardship of the real women Lydia was drawn forth from in 1875. So content warning: misogyny, medical details that some might find gory (I'm not a good judge of that).

The mystery was well paced with nice twists and turns and some very good red herrings. I would absolutely look for more from this author. I hope to see Lydia again (though next time I'm hoping if someone is literally in her house she doesn't dismiss it and tells the cops, that crap makes me nuts)

View all my reviews

Current Mood: busy

cornerofmadness

Straight into Darkness by Faye Kellerman

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I listened to this one on a long drive which might have been a mistake. It was so slow it was putting me to sleep. It's not that it was a bad mystery per se but it was so bogged down with the historical aspects it goes nowhere fast and has one of the worst endings I've read in a long time. Kellerman is an orthodox Jew and she was obviously working through some things here setting this in the early 30s with the rise of Hitler. So here's your content warning, excessive amounts of anti-Semitism is in this.

And that's what tanked this for me. There is tons of gratuitous violence in this to show how bad the Nazis were that have nothing to do with the case. The detective even meets Hitler once in the course of it and tells him off. The Brown shirts create a ton of very graphic violence against suspects and to the police as well. Detective Berg himself is so severely beaten trying to transport the Jewish man his superiors want to frame for the murders he's hospitalized. More detectives are beaten at a political rally.

The basic plot is multiple women were choked and beaten to death, found in fine clothing with one shoe missing. The higher ups refuse to believe or at least admit to the fact that they are linked crimes because then they couldn't blame the women's Jewish husbands/boyfriends.

And if it had stuck with the crime, this wouldn't have been a bad mystery or if even the backdrop of the rise of Nazism was kept brief it would have worked. However, the forays into the anti-Semitism of the Nazis (including how Berg was treated with his Jewish girlfriend that he's cheating on his wife with) are LONG, seemingly endless. By the time those scenes were over I'd forgotten half the clues from the mystery. They distract from rather than add to the tension. Because we know Berg's wrong about Hitler winning. We know what becomes of Munich and its Jewish population. We know how awful the Nazis are without this wallow in their violence (though given some attitudes today maybe it was meant as a reminder of how bad it can become). It's a case of a little pepper adds spice but too much spoils the dish.

View all my reviews

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Bones

cornerofmadness

Death on a Deadline by Joyce St. Anthony

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I didn't know this was number two in the series but in a way that's fine. I'm generally tired of the ways book ones set up non-professional sleuths. In this case it probably would have been different. Irene Ingram is a young woman taking over her father's paper while he's in the south Pacific as a war correspondent in 1942. So she has some very legit reasons to be sleuthing as a reporter even if it's for a small town paper in central Pennsylvania. At that time, those papers were still big deals.

The big county fair is still going on in spite of war time rationing and St Anthony draws on real world history for much of this including the plot. They are going to have a visit from some B and C list actors, musicians etc to sell war bonds. Coming to Prospect PA is the comedian/tour organizer Paul Davis, Angel Harrison whose sister runs the local beauty salon and her awful husband, Freddie Harrison , both are up and coming actors as are Belinda Fox the vamp who Freddie is sleeping with and Kirk Allen hometown boy done good and hoping to do better in Hollywood. Clark Gable was promised as it's not too far from his hometown of Cadiz OH but sadly he's a no show

Very quickly the cheating Freddie is dead in a dunk tank and Ava and Angel want Irene to help find out who did it before Angel is blamed. Irene has it in good with the local sheriff as once her fiance Bill is back from the war, the sheriff, Walt, will be her father in law.

Walt of course isn't too keen on her investigating (being she's a woman in 1942 and she nearly got killed last time) It took her a bit longer than it took me to figure out what Freddie was up to and why he died.

The characters are well realized and even though I figured it out fast (I read far too many of these things apparently) I still very much enjoyed this book. The only reason I didn't give it five stars is I hate it when a sleuth saves up clues and doesn't tell the sheriff (even if they're friends) that drives me nuts. At least the old chestnut of that leading to the sleuth getting in trouble with the villain didn't happen.

I would definitely get more of this series

View all my reviews

Current Mood: bored
Current Music: Midsomer Murder

cornerofmadness

A Trace of Poison (Phyllida Bright Mystery, #2)

A Trace of Poison by Colleen Cambridge

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I got this in a publisher giveaway and I was both interested (prior to winning) and nervous. I have had bad luck with mysteries using real people as detectives. In this case, Agatha Christie is detective adjacent. The real amateur sleuth is her nurse friend from the war turned housekeeper, Phyllida Bright.

I was dubious at first because we meet Phyllida being tiresome about the chauffer's little dog and her anti-dog (or is it just this dog) stance was a bit off-putting. Phyllida is also rather sure she is right about everything and no one else is so it took me a little while to warm up to her. However, in the end I did like her and this book a lot.

Agatha and the Detection Club (which was real, a group for all the famous mystery authors of the time) are hosting a murder fete with the local Murder Club of authors competing for a publishing prize (Phyllida is sure an author would kill to be published and as one, I have to agree) . So we have all kinds of suspects, Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha, G.K. Chesterton to just name a few real ones and then the murder club where we have a priest writing a Father Brown type, an antique dealer, a woman writing about a talking cat (that everyone laughs at her) another woman writing a Poirot-like character in Italy, an Indian doctor who is an expert in poisons and Alaistaire Whittlesby, the local lawyer who everyone thinks is a shoe in to win.

Naturally Whittlesby is an obnoxious jackass and when the first victim falls at the club cocktail party, everyone assumes Allie is the intended victim. The novel moves at a fast pace and tosses out the clues well (I did figure out how and why). Having not seen book one, I wasn't sure why Phyllida is convinced Inspector Cork wasn't competent enough to solve this but naturally she knows better.

I was also curious at a few of her comments as I think Phyllida is ACE or at least demisexual (and she does have a few probably interested men) In many ways her superior attitude reminds me of Sherlock or Agatha's own Poirot and it's a little grating with her as it is with them but it seems to be a mystery trope of long standing. I will definitely read more in this series.

View all my reviews

Current Mood: blah
Current Music: Heroes