Amateur Sleuths Historical Crime Fiction

When an undercover assignment for the Bow Street magistrate sees prostitute Lizzie Hardwicke trade Ma Farley’s Bawdy House in Soho for life as a seamstress the theatre on Drury Lane, it becomes clear quite quickly - what goes on in the wings is much more intriguing than the theatrics being played out onstage.... Soon Lizzie is once again thrown together with the handsome Inspector Will Davenport when a high profile investor is brutally hanged at centre stage and Lizzie discovers the body.

Falkenberg, Sweden. The mutilated body of talented young jewellery designer, Linnea Blix, is found in a snow-swept marina. Hampstead Heath, London. The body of a young boy is discovered with similar wounds to Linnea's. Buchenwald Concentration Camp, 1944. In the midst of the hell of the Holocaust, Erich Hebner will do anything to see himself as a human again. Are the two murders the work of a serial killer, and how are they connected to shocking events at Buchenwald?

“You frighten me,” the Gypsy said. “Never have I seen my crystal ball so filled with darkness.” For Flavia de Luce, the old gypsy's words open up old wounds and new possibilities. Is she a faker, or is there some truth to her powers? And when the village is rocked by another ghastly murder, how will a growing fascination with gypsy lore help Flavia to solve it?

From the Collins Crime Club archive, the first original novel to feature Ben the Cockney tramp, the unorthodox detective character created by J. Jefferson Farjeon, author of Mystery in White. Strange things are happening in the untenanted houses of Jowle Street. There are unaccountable creakings and weird knockings on the door of no.29, where a homeless ex-sailor has taken up residence.

The North Sea, October 1904 - When Russian warships bombard the Hull trawler fleet, killing innocent fishermen, public outrage pushes Britain and Russia to the brink of war, the sparks from which could inflame the entire continent. Doctor Ingo Finch, once of the Royal Army medical corps, is long done with military adventuring. But when a stranger seeks him out, citing a murderous conspiracy behind the infamous 'Dogger Bank Incident', Finch is drawn back into the dark world of espionage.

Sidney Chambers, the Vicar of Grantchester, is a thirty-two-year-old bachelor. Sidney is an unconventional clergyman and can go where the police cannot. Together with his roguish friend Inspector Geordie Keating, Sidney inquires into the suspect suicide of a Cambridge solicitor, a scandalous jewellery theft at a New Year's Eve dinner party, the unexplained death of a well-known jazz promoter and a shocking art forgery, the disclosure of which puts a close friend in danger. Sidney discovers that being a detective, like being a clergyman, means that you are never off duty.

It's 1796, and traveling weaver Will Rees is visiting Salem, Massachusetts. He's in town to buy a luxurious gift for his pregnant wife. While traveling through Salem, however, Rees comes upon a funeral procession for the deceased Mrs. Antiss Boothe. When Rees happens upon Twig, a friend who fought alongside him in the war, he learns that Mrs. Boothe had been very ill, and her death had not come as a surprise. But the next morning, Mr. Boothe has also died - and this time it is clearly murder.

Expat Zoe Barlow has settled well into her artist's life among the Lost Generation in 1920s Paris. When a too-tipsy guest at her weekly poker game breaks Zoe's favorite clock, she's off to a Montparnasse flea market to bargain with the vendor Laurette for a replacement. What Zoe didn't bargain for was the lost Chagall painting that's been used like a rag to wrap her purchases! Eager to learn whether Laurette has more Chagalls lying about like trash, Zoe sets off to track her down at her storage shed. With no Laurette in sight, Zoe snoops around and indeed finds several additional Chagalls.

In the seaside town of Temple Regis, seagulls are wheeling overhead and the holidays are getting close. And then the body of political candidate Odile Clifford is discovered on the balcony of the lighthouse. Fearless Riviera Express reporter Judy Dimont goes in search of the killer - but who is it? And where will they strike next?

London, December 1835: Charles and Kate are out with friends and family for a chilly night of caroling and good cheer. But their blood truly runs cold when their singing is interrupted by a body plummeting from an upper window of a house. They soon learn the dead man at their feet, his neck strangely wrapped in chains, is Jacob Harley, the business partner of the resident of the house, an unpleasant codger who owns a counting house, one Emmanuel Screws.

When a Catholic priest hangs himself during the pope's inauguration, his friend and ex-priest Alex Harker is dragged into a secret war that has been playing out on the fringes of society since the birth of Christ. The suicide sets into motion a planned timetable of terrifying events that will irrevocably change the world as we know it.

1912. Released from the Secret Service, Wiggins sets out for New York and his lost lover, Bela. But after an altercation on board, he finds himself among the low-life of Britain's poorest city, Dublin. Wiggins falls in with gangster Patrick O'Connell and is soon driving the boss' girlfriend around town. Molly wants O'Connell to support her Irish nationalist cause and then they go to find them in America. Finally, Wiggins can solve the mystery of Bela - and meet his old mentor, Sherlock Holmes, in a story of escalating intrigue, danger and violence.

London, January 1836: Just weeks before the release of his first book, Charles is intrigued by an invitation to join the exclusive Lightning Club. But his initiation in a basement maze takes a wicked turn when he stumbles upon the corpse of Samuel Pickwick, the club's president. With the victim's blood literally on his hands, Charles is locked away in notorious Newgate Prison.

A peace-seeking man must unravel the mystery that led to his former lover's death. Expat American journalist Sam Kramer is burned out: too many dead bodies, too many wars covered, too little meaning in it all. He's got a dead-end job at the Daily European as the correspondent for Vienna, where nothing happens now that the Cold War is over. And that is exactly how Kramer likes it. But his private neutral zone is shattered with news of the suicide of Reni Müller, a German left-wing firebrand and Kramer's long-estranged ex-girlfriend.

Mike Lanson was the ace crime reporter for the Gazette, so it was natural that he heard about the kookie wino who had reported eavesdropping on two men plotting a murder. So, it was also natural that he got on the case after one of the two plotters was found dead. Mike, like all reporters, was looking for an answer. But when he filled in the five W's on the next victim, he came up with this: Who: Mike Lanson. What: His own murder. When: As soon as that fire reached the explosives. Where: In a deserted storehouse. Why: Because he knew too much.

Stag Maguire, a burnt-out journalist , agrees to help a friend move. They find an urgent message - HELP ME - written on a piece of silk tacked behind a long-forgotten portrait. The message from an address in Berlin is urgent, though it had to have been written pre-World War II. Curious, Stag and his friend trace it to an apartment, a sealed time capsule that has not been lived in since 1942. And from one phone call, the men unleash a nefarious plot and brutal security forces long thought vanquished. Stag finds himself pitted against a vestige of the Third Reich....

When torrential summer rains uncover a bizarrely tattooed body on a Lake District hillside, old wives' tales also come swirling to the surface. For centuries Lakelanders have whispered that Fletcher Christian staged the massacre on Pitcairn so that he could return home. And there he told his story to an old friend and schoolmate, William Wordsworth, who turned it into a long narrative poem.

When Flavia de Luce is banished to Miss Bodycote's Female Academy in Canada, she’s soon on familiar ground when, on her first night, a mummified body is dislodged from a chimney, and she is presented with a gruesome puzzle to solve. Girls have been disappearing with alarming regularity, leading Flavia to wonder not only how and why but what exactly is the academy's true purpose? Flavia must enter a shadowy world where truth and lies seem interchangeable and no one can be trusted.

1965 - the heyday of rock & roll. Northern Lights are tipped to become as big as The Beatles. But after a gig in Newcastle, lead singer and creative genius Gerry Crowther vanishes into the foggy night. Later, his body is recovered from the River Tyne. Now, almost 20 years on, teen singing sensation Trudi Bell dominates the charts. As she prepares to release a new album, her manager, Lew Pattison, receives a demo tape from an unknown songwriter.

Kyiv, 1919. The Soviets control the city, but White armies menace them from the West. No man trusts his neighbour and any spark of resistance may ignite into open rebellion. When Samson Kolechko's father is murdered, his last act is to save his son from a falling Cossack sabre. Deprived of his right ear instead of his head, Samson is left an orphan, with only his father's collection of abacuses for company. Until, that is, his flat is requisitioned by two Red Army soldiers, whose secret plans Samson is somehow able to overhear with uncanny clarity.