Historical crime fiction

The Silent Ones by Anna McPartlin

By DeathBecomesHer

9 September, 2025

1980 was a mere 45 years ago but my, how things have changed! It was a time without tech – no mobile phones or internet. And over in Ireland, women were still expected to give up their jobs once they got married, while unmarried mothers…

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Murder at the Black Cat Cafe by Seishi Yokomizo

By Erin Britton

8 September, 2025

Translated by Bryan Karetnyk — Murder at the Black Cat Cafe serves up two sinisterly cerebral cases cracked by Kosuke Kindaichi, Seishi Yokomizo’s sublime series detective. While the motive, means and opportunity differ quite considerably, the nefariousness at the heart of both novellas is firmly…

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The House at Devil’s Neck by Tom Mead

By Paul Burke

28 August, 2025

The influence of Golden Age mysteries on modern crime fiction is huge. Readers simply cannot get enough of the closed-circle murder mystery and the locked-room puzzle – archetypes handed down from Agatha Christie and John Dixon Carr through generations of writers to the new kids…

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Meet the author: Catherine Merridale

By crimefictionlover

6 August, 2025

Moscow might not be top of your travel itinerary at the moment, but with crime fiction and historian Catherine Merridale you can safely travel there in your imagination in Moscow Underground. The setup is fascinating. As he consolidates power, Josef Stalin wants to show the…

Kindle Print Reviews

The King’s Agent by Rosemary Hayes

By Erin Britton

28 July, 2025

November 1808. The return to England following service in the Peninsula War has not been a welcome one for former Captain Will Fraser. Having lost his commission and been drummed out of his regiment on trumped-up charges of cowardice and insubordination, he has naught to…

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Gunner by Alan Parks

By Paul Burke

21 July, 2025

Gunner is the opener for a new detective series set during World War II. As such, it delves a little deeper into the past than the author’s award-winning Harry McCoy series, which so vividly recreates 1970s Glasgow. It’s 1941 and former detective Joe Gunner is…

Print Reviews

Nightswimming by Melanie Anagnos

By Vicki Weisfeld

10 July, 2025

Patterson, New Jersey, is the setting for this debut police procedural by Melanie Anagnos, a native of the town. It’s a bittersweet love letter to her native city, the former mill town that is one of the largest in the dense cluster of New York…

Kindle Print Reviews

The Railway Conspiracy by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan

By Vicki Weisfeld

10 April, 2025

Second in this talented team’s genre mashup, The Railway Conspiracy builds on the characters so expertly introduced in last year’s The Murder of Mr Ma. Set in London in the mid-1920s, the series’ main character is Judge Dee Ren Jie, inspired by not only on…

Crime Fiction Lover

The Silent Ones by Anna McPartlin

Murder at the Black Cat Cafe by Seishi Yokomizo

The House at Devil’s Neck by Tom Mead

Meet the author: Catherine Merridale

The King’s Agent by Rosemary Hayes

Gunner by Alan Parks

Nightswimming by Melanie Anagnos

The Railway Conspiracy by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan

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