Historical crime fiction

Repentance by Eloísa Díaz

By Vicki Weisfeld

2 February, 2021

Eloísa Díaz’s riveting new political thriller, Repentance, takes place during two tumultuous periods in Argentina’s history. The present-day of the story is December 2001, when riots in Buenos Aires and elsewhere will lead to the resignation of the country’s president. These disturbances were the culmination…

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The Diabolical Bones by Bella Ellis

By Catherine Turnbull

30 December, 2020

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…

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To Cook a Bear

By Catherine Turnbull

26 October, 2020

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…

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Play the Red Queen by Juris Jurjevics

By RoughJustice

19 October, 2020

This posthumous publication is Jurjevics’ third novel. The co-founder of Soho Press died in 2018 from the long term effects of Agent Orange on his heart. Like so many other Vietnam veterans, Jurjevics’ experiences of that war stayed with him for the rest of his…

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To Cook a Bear by Mikael Niemi

By Catherine Turnbull

7 October, 2020

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…

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An Accidental Corpse by Helen A Harrison

By Sonja van der Westhuizen

21 August, 2020

On the night of 11 August 1956, less than a mile from his home in East Hampton, artist Jackson Pollock crashed his green, convertible Oldsmobile 88 into a tree. The 44-year-old Pollock and a female passenger were killed instantly. Ruth Kligman, Pollock’s mistress, survived the…

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The Night of Shooting Stars by Ben Pastor

By Vicki Weisfeld

14 August, 2020

Ben Pastor’s political thrillers take you inside the Third Reich with her protagonist, Wehrmacht colonel Baron Martin von Bora. Bora served in the Abwehr (German military intelligence) until that unit was disbanded in favour of the SS, Gestapo and other agencies. The Abwehr connection taints…

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Tie Die by Max Tomlinson

By DeathBecomesHer

3 August, 2020

Ooh, I love a book title with a clever pun, and Max Tomlinson’s Tie Die has the added bonus of immediately giving the reader some idea of the era in which it is set. Have you guessed yet? This mystery novel opens in the 1960s…

Crime Fiction Lover

Repentance by Eloísa Díaz

The Diabolical Bones by Bella Ellis

To Cook a Bear

Play the Red Queen by Juris Jurjevics

To Cook a Bear by Mikael Niemi

An Accidental Corpse by Helen A Harrison

The Night of Shooting Stars by Ben Pastor

Tie Die by Max Tomlinson

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