Historical Detective Mystery

Mrs. Laetitia Rodd, aged 52, is the widow of an archdeacon who makes her living as a highly discreet private investigator. Her brother, Frederick Tyson, is a criminal barrister living in nearby Highgate with his wife and 10 children. Frederick finds the cases, and Laetitia solves them using her arch intelligence and her immaculate cover as an unsuspecting widow. When a case arises involving the son of the highly connected Sir James Calderstone, Laetitia sets off for Lincolnshire undercover as the family's new governess.

At the request of Her Majesty's government, private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker agrees to take on his least favorite kind of assignment - he's to provide security for a secret conference with the French government. But shortly after the parties land at the island, Lord Hargrave is killed by a sniper shot, and the French ambassador's head of security is found stabbed to death. The only means of egress from the island - a boat - has been sent away, and the means of signaling for help has been destroyed.

During the height of the Great War, playboy Prince Harry, the third in line to the British throne, vanishes in thin air while horseback riding in Hyde Park The strikingly handsome playboy prince is initially believed to have arranged his disappearance so he can enjoy a brief rendezvous with one of his secret lovers. But when his absence continues on for days, the royal family grows concerned and summons Scotland Yard, who can only recover scant, unrevealing clues.

When a man is found dead in a freshly dug grave adjacent to a golf course, Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings arrive on the scene only to be met by a hostile local police detective who is unwilling to share information. But Poirot's methodical investigation slowly and surely reveals the real killer amid a host of suspects and clues, including an impassioned love letter and heavy lead piping found near the body. However, as Poirot and Hastings rush to solve the murder, a similarly slain corpse and fresh clues are discovered.

On a spring morning in London, 1875, Charles Lenox agrees to take time away from his busy schedule as a Member of Parliament to meet an old protege's client at Charing Cross. But when their cryptic encounter seems to lead, days later, to the murder of an innocuous country squire, this fast favor draws Lenox inexorably back into his old profession. Soon he realizes that, far from concluding the murderer's business, this body is only the first step in a cruel plan, many years in the plotting. Where will he strike next?

Captain Lacey is asked by Peter Thompson of the Thames River Police to help him investigate a cold case - the murder of a woman found near the docks Thompson patrols. The investigation was sidelined, considered unsolvable, but Thompson has long wished to find her killer. Captain Lacey joins him in the hunt, entering a part of society that is closed to outsiders. Meanwhile, he must deal with his daughter's debut and more developments in his new domestic life, including an anonymous blackmailer who's out to ruin Lacey any way he can.

Father Brennan Burke is struggling, and he’s been coping the only way he knows how: self-medicating with drink. He’s barely managing, but his troubles intensify when the body of one of his parishioners washes up on the coast of Halifax. Meika Keller came to Canada after escaping past a checkpoint in the Berlin Wall. An army colonel is charged with her murder, and defense lawyer Monty argues that Meika’s death was a suicide, which is the last thing Father Burke wants to hear.

It’s October, 1923, and Olive Belgrave has a new case. Her client, Lady Agnes doesn’t believe in curses, and she hires Olive to prove her Egyptologist uncle wasn’t the victim of a malevolent mummy. Olive investigates and discovers the truth is much worse—it’s murder. Can Olive debunk the curse and reveal the true culprit before the supposed curse claims another victim?

On a fine summer's day in June, 1914, Ian Rutledge pays little notice to the assassination of an archduke in Sarajevo. An Inspector at Scotland Yard, he is planning to propose to the woman whom he deeply loves, despite intimations from friends and family that she may not be the wisest choice.

Some years ago, Cyrus Barker matched wits with Sebastian Nightwine, an aristocrat and sociopath, and in exposing his evil, sent Nightwine fleeing to hide from justice somewhere in the far corners of the earth. The last thing Barker ever expected was to encounter Nightwine again - but the British government, believing they need Nightwine's help, has granted him immunity for his past crimes, and brought him back to London.

It is four years since the death of King Edward I, but his reign of terror has cast long shadows over the kingdom. At Holyrood Abbey, sheltered in the depths of the Welsh march, the old king's former bodyguards protect his secret relics and watch over a mysterious prisoner who is kept in the abbey's dungeon. But their peaceful existence is shattered when Abbot Henry is poisoned. Summoned to Holyrood, Sir Hugh Corbett, Keeper of the Secret Seal, finds the fortress in chaos. Brothers Anselm and Richard have been brutally slain by nails driven deep into their skulls.

In her twentieth William Monk mystery, she brings us to London's grand Mayfair mansions, where the arrogant masters of the Western world hold sway - and to the teeming Thames waterfront, where one summer afternoon, Monk witnesses the horrifying explosion of the pleasure boat Princess Mary, which takes nearly two hundred of the merrymakers on board to their deaths. The tragedy is no accident.

In the spring of 1918, the Spanish flu epidemic spreads, killing millions of soldiers and civilians across the globe. Overwhelmed by the constant flow of wounded soldiers coming from the French front, battlefield nurse Bess Crawford must now contend with hundreds of influenza patients as well. However, war and disease are not the only killers to strike. Bess discovers, concealed among the dead waiting for burial, the body of an officer who has been murdered.

The eccentric Olive Kettering swore someone was trying to harm her. Too bad no one listened, though plenty wanted her dead. When Olive is shot and killed, Mrs. Jeffries has no problem speaking her mind to see justice served.

Yorkshire 1855. When Colonel Aubrey Tarleton walks into the path of a speeding train, he is crushed to death on the track. The famous Railway Detective, Inspector Robert Colbeck, is immediately put on the case to determine why such a well-respected man would have resorted to suicide. Tarleton's wife had recently gone missing, but was the colonel responsible for her disappearance? It's up to Colbeck and his trusty sergeant Victor Leeming to uncover the truth.

Fall 1889: Lady Rotherton has arrived from London intent on chaperoning her niece Prudence through a New York social season to find a suitable husband. It's certainly not her niece's devilishly handsome partner in Hunter and MacKenzie Investigative Law. Aunt Gillian's eye for eligible suitors is surpassed only by her ability to discern genuine gems from nearly flawless fakes. At the Assembly Ball at Delmonico's, she effortlessly determines that the stones in the spectacular diamond waterfall necklace adorning the neck of the wife of banker William De Vries are fake.

After her bruising encounter with the law, Angela Marchmont has vowed to give up detecting and is doing her best to forget the events of last winter and the terrible lie she told to save herself. So, when a letter arrives from beyond the grave requesting her help and reminding her of the past, she is anything but pleased. Drawn reluctantly into one final case and spurred on by her guilty conscience, Angela soon discovers a viper's nest of family betrayals and hidden enmities that have lain undisturbed for years and that may have led to the deaths of more than one person.

Magdalene la Batarde is the madam of the Old Priory Guesthouse in Southwark. She and her women are expected to engage in a number of sinful activities, but bloody murder isn't one of them until Baldassare, the messenger, dies. Though Baldassare isn't a regular client of the Old Priory Guesthouse, Magdalene and her women refuse to allow his death to go unavenged. Of course, their efforts aren't completely altruistic.

Kathryn Miller Haines’ debut Iris Anderson mystery received considerable buzz for its stellar 15-year-old heroine and engrossing 1940s period details. With her father back from the war, Iris is eager to help him with his private eye business—especially since his mobility is limited thanks to a missing leg. Now with a case involving a boy she knows from school to investigate, Iris leaps into action and soon finds herself in the middle of a harrowing adventure.

Iceland 1940. Britain invades Iceland. Lieutenant Tom Marks is a British officer tasked with defending Whale Fjord. He meets Kristín, a young widow from a nearby farm, who has a small son. Tom is smitten. Iceland 2023. Inspector Magnus Ragnarsson is called to the shores of Whale Fjord where the skeletons of a man and a woman have been discovered, both shot with British wartime bullets. Magnus uncovers a web of anger and revenge that stretches back 80 years and forward to a shocking murder in Reykjavík.