Historical

No offense to Mr. Thomas, but it’s sometimes hard to believe that he is a male writer, so completely does he embrace his female protagonist and get inside her skin, while at the same time illustrating through action the variety of obstacles that faced a woman in 1640’s York.  It helps that his Bridget is a midwife, the most female of professions.  It’s not questioned when Bridget goes to all parts of the city, or that she has enough familiarity with the human body to serve as an advisor in the case of a murder.  She has some high up connections as well, making her, for a mystery character, perfectly placed. read more

Lyndsay Faye is one of the more original, beautiful, bold and interesting new voices in mystery fiction.  Her novels are set in 1840s New York City when the police department was just being formed – and she’s being compared, inevitably, to Caleb Carr.  I think a more apt comparison would be to the historical novels of Hilary Mantel, who, like Faye, employs beautiful prose, tells a cracking good story, and drenches the reader in atmosphere and character development.

Her hero, Timothy Wilde, is a reluctant member of the brand new police force, who were given Copper Stars to wear (hence the term “Copper”).  As the book opens, Tim is a bartender, with savings, an apartment, and an eye on one Mercy Underhill.  In a second, his fortunes change, as his workplace and his apartment – complete with his savings, all in silver coin – are wiped out, and Tim wakes up in his brother Val’s apartment to also discover that a large part of his face has been burned.  He feels he has nothing now to offer Mercy and keeps away from her in shame. read more

I can’t think of a more delicious way to allocate your book buying budget than to buy a Tasha Alexander novel.  Alexander, who began this Victorian series with her central character of Lady Emily falling in love with her recently dead husband after the fact, has only continued to spice up her characters.  Lady Emily’s love of all things Greek and the scholarly attributes that come with her passion make her a believable investigative partner for her husband, Colin Hargreaves, who works undercover for the crown. read more

Like Tasha Alexander’s debut (And Only to Deceive), Anna Lee Huber’s novel has a unique and memorable premise.  Young, widowed Lady Darby is staying with her sister and her husband at their castle in Scotland.  She’s recovering not from the loss of her husband, but from the slings and arrows thrown her way by disapproving members of high society.  Lady Darby was married, as the title suggests, to an anatomist, and being a skilled painter it’s thought (but not proven) that she did the drawings for his anatomy guide.  In 1830 or thereabouts, that was a scandal of the highest order.  There’s more to the story but I don’t want to give away details that Huber has been at pains to tease out throughout the story. read more

This is a fun mix of romance, mystery and a cracking good ghost story.  I enjoyed the fact that the author unabashedly buys into the whole ghost paradigm – there’s not an ounce of irony here, which serves to make her ghost far more scary. Set just after WWI, the main character is a young woman at Somerville College, Oxford, part of an illustrious group of women who were the first to get a university education at Oxford.  In real life their numbers included Dorothy L. Sayers and Vera Brittain, author of the classic memoir of WWI, Testament of Youth. read more

Loren Estleman has written a lot of books, but many of them have been in one or another of his excellent series, so when he writes one that isn’t, it’s news. Actually The Confessions of Al Capone more resembles one of his westerns or Detroit novels than an Amos Walker effort because it’s a historical saga that uses a fictional character to portray a period of high lawlessness and great social change, seasoned with the presence of actual figures and events.

The set up is typical masterful Estleman – a low level F.B.I functionary, Peter Vasco, is one day brusquely summoned to the highest level of power, J. Edgar Hoover himself. Peter assumes he’s going to be canned, but in fact he learns that Hoover has groomed him for a long cherished ambition, to once and for all learn the secrets of Al Capone. Scarface is greatly diminished in 1944, in exile in Florida, having been paroled from his tax evasion prison rap, riddled with syphilis and waiting to die. Hoover’s plan is masterful, if manipulative, and Peter is uniquely equipped to carry it out. He’s an almost priest, having left the seminary just short of graduation, and thus equipped to travel down to Miami, masquerade as a padre and hear the addled Al’s final confessions. His entree to the tightly controlled Capone household is his own father, once a driver for Capone in Chicago and now a fishing boat owner in Fort Lauderdale. Peter’s relationship with both his father and the church for which he’s to pose as a father is conflicted, so there’s a lot of soul searching involved with his pursuit of Capone, but he’s also glad, in these war years when Al’s racketeer colleagues have turned to black market profiteering, to be able to do something to help the war effort. read more

This is a totally charming book, and MacNeal is deservingly nominated for both an Edgar and a Dilys this year (and probably an Anthony and an Agatha, though I am not always the best predictor).  Set during WWII, this is the second book in the Maggie Hope series.  Featuring a fledgling spy (Maggie) fresh from Churchill’s office and spy school, she was an abysmal failure at the physical aspects of her training, presenting a conundrum for her handlers.  She tells a friend it was terrible, like gym class every day, and if there aren’t a lot of readers nodding their heads in recognition over that comment, I’ve misjudged the mystery reading public. read more

This fascinating little volume, set during England’s Civil War in 1644, is surprisingly zippy. I love historical novels but I have to say “zippy” is not always the applicable word. It’s unusual also in that it’s written by a man but features a female protagonist, and not just any female, but a midwife, the most female of all professions.

Any concerns you might have about not being very knowledgeable about Oliver Cromwell’s revolution to understand the story can be set aside – while this setting is the book’s backdrop, Thomas’ main concern is character and plot, just like any other able novelist. His central character, Bridget Hodgeson, is a wealthy and well known midwife in the city of York, a city being besieged by rebels but still in the hands of the King’s forces. read more

This is another fun entry in Rhys Bowen’s delightful Lady Georgie series, about the travails of a young woman in the 1930’s who is 35^th in line to the throne.  There are references to “Great Grandmother” Victoria and the horrors of Mrs. Simpson.  My favorite in this series, A Royal Pain, involves Queen Mary’s request for Georgie’s help in quashing the romance between Mrs. Simpson and the (then) Prince Edward.

The tone of these novels is lighter and funnier than Bowen’s Molly Murphy series, but like that series, the action revolves around a strong female lead.  Georgie is impoverished and forced to eke out a living in various “lady like” occupations, none of them very remunerative.  In this novel she is rescued from the gloom of her ancestral Scottish castle by an ad asking for a hostess at a country house party. read more