C.S. Harris’s mystery Where Shadows Dance set in London in 1812 will keep you guessing until the very end. When a surgeon buys a body for his medical students to dissect, he hardly expects to step into the middle of a murder case. But as Sebastian St. Cyr tries to solve the case, the dead bodies keep appearing and even his fiancée is a suspect.
Jewell Parker Rhodes’s latest mystery in her Marie Laveau series, Hurricane, is a spell-binding mystery infused with an inspiring take on what womanhood can be in all its aspects. Hurricane Katrina may be the least of Marie’s problems as she faces a miasma of confusing ancient spirits, a murdered family, powerful oil companies, and a curiously ill town.
A wide-ranging interview with author Bruce Macbain about his mystery Roman Games and the historical background of it–from the exotic cult of Isis to parallels between Roman sensibilities and contemporary American life.
A young Edna Ferber, later novelist of Giant, Show Boat, and So Big and member of the Algonquin Round Table, teams up with Houdini to solve the mystery when a school friend disappears and then turns up murdered. Ed Ifkovic vividly portrays small town American life at the turn of the century.
Jacqueline Winspear fans won’t need any prodding to read her latest Maisie Dobbs mystery, A Lesson in Secrets. The rest of you should be ashamed of yourselves. Maisie’s character makes for uncommonly good reading as she takes a new direction professionally, working undercover for the Secret Service in the midst of the conflicting political currents of 1932.
Bruce Macbain’s Roman Games launches an excellent new Roman mystery series. If you are a fan of Steven Saylor, Lindsey Davis, or Roman history in general, you’ll want to pick it up. His detective, Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Younger), a decent, straight-laced senator, teams up with Martial, a poet of racy and scurrilous verses, to untangle a delightfully twisted murder case.
Bless the Bride, the latest in Rhys Bowen’s Molly Murphy series, sends Molly to New York’s Chinatown in 1903 to sift through layers of crime and a major moral dilemma before she’ll get a chance at the layers of her own wedding cake–or will she?
The Curse-Maker, by Kelli Stanley, set in Bath during the Roman period, blends a twisting, exciting mystery with a vivid Roman setting. Stanley combines her background as a classicist with a passion for noir mystery. The Roman politics and corruption that provide the context of the mystery are compellingly developed and, like many things Roman, echo modern life while retaining their uniquely Latin flavor. click the title to read the full review…
J.J. Murphy’s Murder Your Darlings is a thoroughly delightful read. Part screwball comedy, part literary spoof, this mystery stars Dorothy Parker, William Faulkner, Robert Benchley and others solving a murder when a prominent drama critic is found stabbed with a fountain pen under the famous Round Table at the Algonquin Hotel. Don’t be put off if you’ve never heard of the Algonquin Round Table—Murphy supplies whatever background you need, and you don’t have to have read Parker to catch her rapid fire humor. Fans of Jacqueline Winspear will enjoy this light take on the same period.
Ben Bova stays true to his science fiction roots in this action-packed novel set in the Bronze Age world of the Hittite empire and Troy’s last days. Lukka, a soldier in the emperor’s army, returns home from a lengthy campaign to discover the Hittite capital in flames, his family stolen away by slavers. He follows the trail to Troy only to find that city under siege and the complications growing as he tries to save his family in the midst of yet another city’s demise. Bova reworks the myths surrounding Troy to incorporate Lukka in these legends. He has created… Read More »Review of The Hittite by Ben Bova
