Best of
Historical-Mystery

1991

The Nightingale Gallery


Paul Doherty - 1991
    The crown of England is left in the hands of a mere boy, the future Richard II, and the great nobles gather like hungry wolves round the empty throne. A terrible power struggle threatens the country, and one of London's powerful merchant princes is foully murdered within a few days of the old king's death. Coroner Sir John Cranston and Dominican monk Brother Athelstan are ordered to investigate. As others associated with Springall are found dead, Cranston and Athelstan are drawn ever deeper into a dark web of intrigue...

The White Rose Murders


Paul Doherty - 1991
    Benjamin and Roger are ordered into Margaret's household to resolve certain mysteries as well as to bring about her restoration to Scotland.They begin by questioning Selkirk, a half-mad physician imprisoned in the Tower. He is subsequently found poisoned in a locked chamber guarded by soldiers. The only clue is a poem of riddles. However, the poem contains the seeds for other gruesome murders. The faceless assassin always leaves a white rose, the mark of Les Blancs Sangliers, a secret society plotting the overthrow of the Tudor monarchy...This novel was previously published under the pseudonym Michael Clynes.

The Monk's Tale


Paul Doherty - 1991
    So how did the assassin commit such a dreadful crime? Coroner Sir John Cranston and Dominican monk Brother Athelstan are ordered to investigate. "Medieval mystery fans have cause for rejoicing with the return of Brother Athelstan" Booklist on Bloodstone

Death and the Chapman


Kate Sedley - 1991
    The birth of a new medieval detective.The political situation in 1471 is complex and the war between the Yorkist and Lancastrian factions rages on. But for Roger the Chapman, who has recently given up a monk’s cell for freedom to be found peddling his wares on the open road, life goes on much as normal.Until, that is, he gets caught up in the strange disappearance of Clement Weaver, only son of a wealthy Bristol alderman. It seems that Clement is not the only one to have vanished without a trace from London’s Crossed Hands Inn...Roger’s interest is piqued and at the request of the alderman he sets off for the bustle and excitement of London, to find out just how Clement disappeared. It is a journey that carries him to a confrontation with the highest power in the land, and puts his life in mortal peril.The first of the gripping Roger the Chapman mysteries, the memoirs of an insatiably curious ex-monk who seeks out justice for the victims of medieval miscreants, ideal for fans of Graham Brack and Paul Doherty.

Roman Blood


Steven Saylor - 1991
    Compelled by this message, the wealthy, sybaritic Sextus Roscius goes not to his harlot, but to his doom—savagely murdered by unknown assassins. In the unseasonable heat of a spring morning in 80 B.C., Gordianus the Finder is summoned to the house of Cicero, a young advocate staking his reputation on this case. The charge is patricide; the motive, a son's greed. The punishment, rooted deep in Roman tradition, is horrific beyond imagining.Gordianus's investigation takes him through the city's raucous, pungent streets and deep into urban Umbria, unraveling layers of deceit, twisted passions, and murderous desperation. From pompous, rouged nobles to wily slaves to citizens of seemingly simple virtue, the case becomes a political nightmare. As the defense proceeds toward a devastating confrontation in the Forum, one man's fate may be threaten the very leaders of Rome itself.

Fell and Foul Play


John Dickson Carr - 1991
    GIDEON FELL, DETECTIVE * A woman is stabbed in a locked tower. * A man is bludgeoned in a room with its windows locked and its door guarded. * In the midst of a seance, a medium is murdered, perhaps by ghostly hands. * A man is killed while burglarizing his own home. * The body of a strangled woman lies on a beach. The corpse is surrounded by unmarked sand.Bizarre murders, locked rooms, impossible crimes. These are the cases for Dr. Gideon Fell, John Dickson Carr's Chestertonian sleuth. Here, for the first time all of Carr's fiction about his great detective is brought together in one volume including two previously unpublished wartime radio plays.AND OTHERSIn addition this book contains six characteristically clever Carrian crime classics. One, a historical mystery in which a swordsman reveals a strange past, my prove unknown even to some of the author's most devoted followers. In the others a man is paid to commit a legal murder; a mysterious American intervenes in an assassination in France; a judge is shot with a bullet from a different gun; a knife vanishes into thin air; and a dying woman sends a cryptic message to the living.

The Great Texas Airship Mystery


Wallace O. Chariton - 1991
    Chariton explores the great Texas airship adventure from beginning to end and retells the story exactly as it unfolded in 1897.