A couple of months ago I started on a project to survey murder mysteries written in historic settings. A well written mystery is a wonderful way to explore a time and place otherwise unknown and unknowable. Even if we could visit Rome in 72AD, would we really want to? Or even London in 1896. The smells alone, to say nothing of the bad air, food and sanitary facilities, would give most armchair travelers pause. But a good novelist can describe the inconveniences and the glories well enough that we can almost feel the era until we turn off our kindles or nooks and go up to bed, or get off the train, or go into the doctor’s office, or whatever our modern schedule demands.
I am glad I started this a while back, as lately I have been having trouble getting started on any of a number of books. Distraction, exhaustion, and grief all play a role, so I hate to condemn any of the books I have tried and failed to complete, but here is a brief list of them:
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith. This novel opens with a child plotting to kill and eat a house cat that another character has kept alive but finally had to release and hope it could run away and fend for itself. Sorry. Don’t think that this is a book I could enjoy under any conditions. However, Tom Rob Smith is a very talented writer (I know this by how upset the first few pages made me) who has written a series of mysteries and if anyone is familiar with his work, I would love to read a diary about him. (Hint.)
Murder Your Darlings by JJ Murphy. Set in New York during the heyday of the Algonquin Round Table, this mystery finds Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley attempting to clear William Faulkner of a murder charge. I got half way through it. And don’t know if I will finish it.
Those that I barely started:
The Witch Doctor’s Wife, by Tamar Meyers
The Kill, A Hunt Country Suspense Novel by Jan Newbarth
The Faces of the Gone, by Brad Parks
The Darkening Field by William Ryan
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Frank
Maisie Dobbs, by Jacqueline Winspear.
Even more frigthening, to me, are the ones that I have read:
Murder Takes the Cake, by Gayle Trent
A Small Fortune, by Audrey Baun
Cloaked in Red, by Vivian Vande Velde, which is a very good collection of short stories based on the Red Riding Hood fairy tale (Discussing the heroine’s name, Velde writes, ”How would you feel if your parents called you ‘Little Blue-Plaid Catholic School Uniform’ or ‘Little Green Sweatshirt with the Hole at the Elbow?’”)
And then I turned to Marion Chesney and read Lady Fortescue Steps Out and Miss Tonks Turns to Crime, both volumes of the Poor Relation Series and as lighthearted as her MC Beaton mysteries.
And though I have started Rachel Maddow’s Drift and Maxtone-Graham’s Titanic Tragedy, nothing seemed appealing enough to hold my interest for very long.
So I began to watch the PBS series Downton Abbey. After two marathon viewing sessions, I am now at episode 6 of season 2. (Not the least of its attractions is that none of the cast members are drop dead gorgeous people. Unlike any television programing produced for American consumption, Downton Abbey does not batter us with visions of women with impossible bodies and men with jutting jaws. These actors look pretty much like people we all might know in real life, as opposed to the cast of Dallas or Desperate Housewives). In addition to being great escapism, it has re-awakened an interest I have long had in the first quarter of the 20th century.
I will now be looking for books set in this era. I believe the Maisie Dobbs series is set in the late 20s, and the Ian Rutledge series is post WWI. Any suggestions for mysteries set pre-WWI? It is an interesting era as so many things in the world were changing at the time as the Victorian age gave way to the Edwardian and finally the modern era.
The era covered in tonight's diary is a much older one. These are just a few of the authors who have written of ancient Rome. A highly inclusive listing of mystery novels set in ancient times can be found at the website, Historical Mystery Fiction.
Lindsey Davis
Lindsey Davis has the distinction of being the final winner of the Diamond Dagger Award for Lifetime Achievement in mystery writing from the
Crime Writers Association which she won in 2011. This is the final one sponsored by Cartier, but is only Lindsey Davis' latest award.
“The Silver Pigs won the Authors’ Club Best First Novel award in 1989, she won the Crime Writers’ Association Dagger in the Library and Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, while Falco has won the Sherlock Award for Best Comic Detective.”
Marcus Didius Falco is the “private informer” of this series starting in 70AD during the reign of Vespasian. Not being an expert in the period, I can only report that Davis has received accolades for her historical accuracy. And creating a hard boiled detective and putting him in ancient Rome and making us like it explains a lot of her awards. I am new to her work, having heard the name in the R&BLers group, and am glad that having only read one, I have so many to look forward to.
Silver Pigs (1989) |
One Virgin Too Many (1999) |
Shadows in Bronze (1990) |
Ode to a Banker (2000) |
Venus in Copper (1991) |
Body in the Bath House (2001) |
Iron Hand of Mars(1992) |
Jupiter Myth (2002) |
Poseidon's Gold (1993) |
Accusers (The) (2003) |
Last Act in Palmyra (1994) |
Scandal Takes a Holiday (2004) |
Time to Depart (1995) |
See Delphi and Die (2005) |
Dying Light in Corduba (1996) |
Saturnalia (2007) |
Three Hands in the Fountain (1997) |
Alexandria (2008) |
Two For The Lions (1998) |
Nemesis (2010) |
John Maddox Roberts
Writing of an era 140 years earlier is John Maddox Roberts, author of the SPQR series. SPQR is the Latin acronym for Senatus Populusque Romanus ("The Senate and People of Rome"), the official name of the Republic. His hero is Decius Cecilius Metellus, the son of a noble house who is the commander of the local vigiles and responsible for investigating deaths in his area.
SPQR I: The King's Gambit (1990) |
SPQR VIII: The River God's Vengeance (2004) |
SPQR II: The Catiline Conspiracy (1991) |
SPQR IX: The Princess and the Pirates (2005) |
SPQR III: The Sacrilege (1992) |
SPQR X: A Point of Law (2006) |
SPQR IV: The Temple Of The Muses (1999) |
SPQR XI: Under Vesuvius (2007) |
SPQR V: Saturnalia (1999) |
SPQR XII: Oracle of the Dead (2008) |
SPQR VI: Nobody Loves A Centurion (2001) |
SPQR XIII: The Year of Confusion (2010) |
SPQR VII: The Tribune's Curse (2003) |
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Steven Saylor
Also writing novels set in Rome during a similar time frame is Steven Saylor, author of the series featuring Gordianus the Finder. I first encountered Steven Saylor's work when we were planning a trip to Rome a few years ago and was hooked on Gordiani with his Sherlockian deduction skills displayed in the first chapter of the first book. With the primitive state of forensic science in the Roman Republic, deduction was essential to solving crimes.
Roman Blood is based on an actual case that was pled by Marcus Tullius Cicero who has a featured role in the series.
Roman Blood (1991) |
A Murder on the Appian Way (1996) |
The House of the Vestals (1997) |
Rubicon (1999) |
Arms of Nemesis (1992) |
Last Seen in Massilia (2000) |
A Gladiator Dies Only Once (2005) |
A Mist of Prophecies (2002) |
Catilina's Riddle (1993) |
The Judgment of Caesar (2004) |
The Venus Throw (1995) |
The Triumph of Caesar (2008) |
David Wishart
Totally unfamiliar with David Wishart, I can only quote
others:
Most of his novels share the same protagonist, Marcus Corvinus. Spurning the conventional career path of a military posting via a civil service post to an elected post and the Senate, Wishart's hero develops a taste for investigating crimes of a particularly sensitive nature, thereby allowing the author to introduce numerous historical figures and to continue to mine a rich seam of Imperial Roman intrigue. Plots are typically complex, and give us a fair taste of the treacherous nature of Roman politics in the immediate post-Republican era. Wishart's signature is his mix of accurate historical detail and racy modern dialogue; Corvinus talks, very entertainingly, like a Raymond Chandler hero. He is also developing an interesting personality and a social conscience somewhat at odds with his high birth.
And, from an interview with
Helen Caldwell,
The books in the Marcus Corvinus series are humorous, with the characters speaking in modern dialogue. The complex plots can generally be divided into two categories: political mysteries and whodunits. In both cases, Wishart likes to base the story around a documented historical event, using the facts to come up with a new, fictional solution. “It’s a bit like doing The Times crossword: you’ve got to produce an answer that covers all the bases. In crime novels you can’t finish up with the accepted explanation, otherwise it’s just an historical novel.”
Ovid (1995) |
A Vote for Murder (2003) |
Germanicus (1997) |
Parthian Shot (2004) |
Sejanus (1998) |
Food for the Fishes (2005) |
The Lydian Baker (1998) |
In at the Death (2007)
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Old Bones (2000) |
Illegally Dead (2008) |
Last Rites (2001) |
Bodies Politic (2010) |
White Murder (2002) |