Historical Detective Mystery

Private Enquiry agent Cyrus Barker has just about seen it all—he's been attacked by assassins, his office has been bombed, and evil-doers have even nearly killed his dog. But never before has a potential client dropped dead in his office. When Roland Fitzhugh, Member of Parliament arrives to consult Barker and his partner Thomas Llewelyn, he falls to the floor, dead, upon entering.

Someone is killing the de Brescou racehorses with a “bolt” gun, shooting them silently, leaving no clues. Before the noble family, which includes his fiancée, is torn apart, jockey Kit Fielding must find the assassin.

December 1889. Fresh from debunking a 'ghostly' hound in Dartmoor, Sherlock Holmes has returned to London, only to find himself the target of a deadly vendetta. A beautiful client arrives with a tale of ghosts, kidnapping and dynamite on a whisky estate in Scotland, but brother Mycroft trumps all with an urgent assignment in the South of France. On the fabled Riviera, Holmes and Watson encounter treachery, explosions, rival French detective Jean Vidocq...and a terrible discovery.

Northamptonshire, 1810: As a new canal network snakes across the landscape, a vicious mob stakes its claim to the county. Every local constable is out on the hunt for the ruthless Panther Gang. When an elderly man is robbed and murdered in sleepy Middleton, the beleaguered magistrates send for help from London's Bow Street Police Office.

In June of 1893, the future Nicholas II travels to London for a royal wedding, bringing with him his private security force and his ballerina mistress, Mathilde Kchessinska. Rumored to be the target of a professional assassin known only as La Sylphide, and the subject of conspiracies against his life by his own family who covet his future throne, Nicholas is protected by not only private security, but the professional forces of both England and Russia.

For Emily, accepting the proposal of Philip, the viscount Ashton, was an easy way to escape her overbearing mother, who was set on a grand society match. So when Emily's dashing husband died on safari soon after their wedding, she felt little grief. After all, she barely knew him. Now, nearly two years later, she discovers that Philip was a far different man from the one she had married so cavalierly.

Quebec, 1994. Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars is summoned from Montreal to investigate the murder of a prisoner in an experimental women's jail. He knows the prime suspect - he arrested her. But darker forces are interested in Abigail, and Émile interferes at his own peril. For as he'll soon discover, in Lady Jail, nothing is as it seems.

In the early days of 1924, Mary Russell and her husband, the inimitable Sherlock Holmes, are given an urgent task by his brother, Mycroft: find a British spy gone missing along India's northwest frontier, where men are dying and trouble is brewing. The spy's name? It is one Holmes knows from his sojourn in India long ago, and one Russell knows from a book. It is Kimball O'Hara, known to the world by the name Rudyard Kipling called him - Kim....

>In July of 1923, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple travels to Henley-on-Thames to visit her aunt and uncle, as well as to work on her latest writing assignment: covering the Henley Royal Regatta for an American magazine. Daisy plans a simple trip researching her article, enjoying the races, and, come the weekend, having a pleasant time with her fiancé, Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard. But the tensions between the Ambrose team's coxswain, Horace Bott - a shopkeeper's son and scholarship student at Oxford - and rower Basil DeLancey - the younger son of an earl and all-around bounder - are constantly threatening to erupt into violence.

Daniel Pitt is delighted that his sister is visiting London with her American husband Patrick, a policeman, and their young daughter. But Patrick's trip has another purpose, for which he enlists Daniel's help. Philip Sydney, a young British diplomat, is accused of robbery and assault in Washington, but he has taken diplomatic immunity and fled to England. The perfect opportunity to obtain justice presents itself when Sydney is accused of a small embezzlement at the British Embassy in the USA, but as Daniel digs deeper into the case it becomes clear that vengeance is involved.

It’s the holiday season, and Max Mephisto and his daughter Ruby have landed a headlining gig at the Brighton Hippodrome, the biggest theater in the city, an achievement only slightly marred by the less-than-savory supporting act: a tableau show of naked “living statues”. But when one of the girls goes missing and turns up dead not long after, Max and Ruby realize there’s something far more sinister than obscenity afoot in the theater.

Calcutta, 1923. When a Hindu theologian is found murdered in his home, the city is on the brink of all-out religious war. Can officers of the Imperial Police Force, Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant Surendranath Banerjee track down those responsible in time to stop a bloodbath? Set at a time of heightened political tension, beginning in atmospheric Calcutta and taking the detectives all the way to bustling Bombay, the latest instalment in this series presents Wyndham and Banerjee with an unprecedented challenge. Will this be the case that finally drives them apart?

The Prince of Wales has asked four wealthy entrepreneurs and their wives to Buckingham Palace to discuss a fantastic idea: the construction of a 6000-mile railroad that would stretch the full length of Africa. But the prince’s gathering proves disastrous when the mutilated body of a prostitute turns up in a linen closet among the queen’s monogrammed sheets. With great haste, Thomas Pitt, the brilliant mainstay of Special Services, is summoned to resolve the crisis.

Harry Exeter doesn't want the aid of the Thames River Police in tracking down the men who kidnapped his wife, Kate. He only asks them to help him navigate Jacob's Island, a creepy mass of decrepit buildings where he will hand off a large sum of money in exchange for her life. But when they arrive at the meeting place, Commander Monk and five of his best men are attacked from all sides, and Monk is left wondering who could have given away their plans. As Monk follows leads, it seems inevitable one of his own men has betrayed him.

A timeless murder mystery with the fascinating, glamorous Mitford sisters at its heart, The Mitford Trial is the fourth installment in the Mitford Murders series from Jessica Fellowes, inspired by a real-life murder in a story full of intrigue, affairs and betrayal....

When a Hungarian immigrant is dismembered near London's River Thames, Commander Monk is called to the eerie scene, where 16 candles surround the corpse. As identical murders pop up around the city, Monk confronts the unsettling options: could it be the work of a secret society? A serial madman? Or is a xenophobic Brit targeting foreigners? A local doctor who speaks Hungarian from his days on the battlefield may be able to help, but his own struggles with post-traumatic stress have left his memory in shambles.

France, 1977. Baptiste is an intelligent but somewhat naive detective, sent to work in Clermiers, a town filled with corruption. A girl goes missing, presumed dead after bloody clothes are found close to an illicit party near an abandoned chateau. Baptiste believes he's nailed the culprit, the eccentric Gilles Mailloux. When he appears in court, the public call for the guillotine - and that's the sentence Mailloux gets. But as Mailloux awaits an appeal for clemency, he asks to see Baptiste, who's still haunted by the fact the girl's body remains missing.

It was 1921 when Lord Peter Wimsey first encountered the Attenbury emeralds. The recovery of the magnificent gem in Lord Attenbury's most dazzling heirloom made headlines - and launched a shell-shocked young aristocrat on his career as a detective. Now it is 1951. A happily married Lord Peter has just shared the secrets of that mystery with his wife, the detective novelist Harriet Vane. Then the new young Lord Attenbury - grandson of Lord Peter's first client - seeks his help again, this time to prove who owns the gigantic emerald that Wimsey last saw in 1921.

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.

Charles Lenox has received a cryptic plea for help from an old Harrow schoolmate, Gerald Leigh, but when he looks into the matter he finds that his friend has suddenly disappeared. As boys they had shared a secret: a bequest from a mysterious benefactor had smoothed Leigh's way into the world after the death of his father. Lenox, already with a passionate interest in detective work, made discovering the benefactor's identity his first case - but was never able to solve it.