The Dead of Winter
Nicola Upson continues her series featuring Golden Age crime writer Josephine Tey and embraces the tradition of the classic country estate mystery in this thrilling homage to the genre. The Dead of Winter is a festive whodunit set in December 1938, as storm clouds of…
The Diabolical Bones by Bella Ellis
Christmas is approaching but there is little good cheer in the bitterly cold air in Haworth, Yorkshire, in December 1845. The literary geniuses turned sleuths Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë are about to investigate their second sinister case and it has a grim gothic chill to…
Catherine Turnbull: Top five books of 2020
It’s not been the best year and travelling to more challenging past eras through the portal of modern historical crime novels and thrillers has been a welcome holiday from 2020. My selection includes books set in War World II, the dark and dangerous world of 19th century…
The Dead of Winter by Nicola Upson
Back during the Golden Age of mystery writing the festive whodunit was a tradition. One of the many characters in The Dead of Winter curls up with Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot’s Christmas as he is trapped with others on an island cut off from the…
All the Devils Are Here by Louise Penny
Like this book’s author, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec is revisiting Paris – a place that haunts him with shadows of the past – from his home near Montréal in Canada. He’s in the City of Light with his wife Reine-Marie, son and daughter, and their spouses…
To Cook a Bear
This beguiling book by Mikael Niemi is a mash up of genres with historical crime, coming-of-age and literary novel tropes that manages to be reflective and page-turning. In Sweden in 1852 real life revivalist Pastor Lars Levi Laestadius, and Jussi, a runaway Sami boy, turn detective and use…
To Cook a Bear by Mikael Niemi
Translated by Deborah Bragan-Turner — A young boy and a father figure in the woods are collecting botanical specimens, a bucolic scene a few pages in from the opening to this beguiling historical crime novel. The man is Pastor Lars Levi Laestadius, who was the real-life leader of a…