In the spirit of Umberto Ecco's The Name of the Rose and Ellis Peters' acclaimed Brother Cadfael mysteries, here is a collection of historical detective stories, written by contemporary authors and featuring a gallery of offbeat sleuths from the past. In a wry sendup of the classic "locked room" puzzle, an Egyptian sage ponders the mystery of a locked tomb. In another tale, a Roman slave's investigation of a theft leads him to people in very high places. Edgar Allan Poe's, Auguste Dupin, has been resurrected for a new adventure, as have historical figures, from William Shakespeare--hot on the trail of Christopher Marlowe's murderer--to Samuel Johnson, with Boswell playing his Dr. Watson! (And speaking of Watson...the wizard of Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes himself, appears in an original story written by the son of Arthur Conan Doyle!) These 23 tales comprise a mixed bag of delicious crime capers designed to tickle the fancy of any dedicated mystery buff.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
23 mysteries, from ancient Egypt to Holmes - mixed bag,
By Michele L. Worley (Kingdom of the Mouse, United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Historical Whodunits (Hardcover)
Historical = before the author's birth.The short stories herein are divided into 4 sections. Most were first published in _Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine_; 5 were first printed in this collection, noted below as "original". Ellis Peters' foreword should interest Cadfael fans, as she talks a little about how she came to create the series. Part I: THE ANCIENT WORLD Herodotus: "The Thief versus King Rhampsinitus" - Yes, *that* Herodotus, the legendary historian - this story is more than 2000 years old. The King is believed to be Ramses III, allowing for the Greek historian's rendering of the name. This isn't a "who?" story so much as "how're they going to get caught?" - the king's builder put a few extra features into the treasury building for clandestine withdrawals. James, Breni: "Socrates Solves a Murder" Style imitates Plato's Socratic dialogues when Socrates is speaking or being spoken to. The human corpse was found in a shrine, mixed with the smashed remains of the statue of Eros therein. Nichols, Wallace: "The Treasury Thefts" is really 2 stories about Sollius, a slave in the time of Marcus Aurelius who acts as the brain behind his master's problem-solving successes. "The Case of the Empress' Jewels" is also included, the 2 stories being closely related. Peters, Elizabeth: "The Locked Tomb Mystery" *Not* a Peabody/Emerson story; Amenhotep Sa Hapu was a real 14th century BC sage, here investigating a tomb robbery. Reed, Mary and Mayer, Eric: "A Byzantine Mystery" (original) John is Emperor Justinian's chamberlain, and a Mithraist rather than a Christian, but his life is forfeit if he doesn't recover a stolen fragment of the True Cross without letting the theft become public. Roberts, John Maddox: "Mightier Than the Sword" (original) Set after the first 4 SPQR novels; Decius, searching for building violations rather than corpses, isn't pleased to find one in a nice new townhouse - not even a disgusting tenement cellar where you'd at least *expect* it. Tremayne, Peter: "The High King's Sword" (original) An early Sister Fidelma story, dealing with the death of the joint High Kings of Ireland in the Yellow Plague year of 664 AD. The abbot who advises the Great Assembly has summoned her not because of the deaths - the plague did that - but because one of the symbols needed to lawfully inaugurate a new High King has been stolen. van Gulik, Robert: "He Came with the Rain" - from _Judge Dee at Work_ (see). PART II: THE MIDDLE AGES Frazer, Margaret: "The Witch's Tale" (original) was referred to obliquely in Frazer's Dame Frevisse novel _The Reeve's Tale_: that of how a local witch once killed a man with a spell, supposedly in self-defense. Gores, Joe: "A Sad and Bloody Hour" - the narrator is a young actor and wannabe-playwright grieving for Kit Marlowe, his friend and mentor. Then a blowsy-looking woman approaches him, claiming knowledge of suspicious circumstances surrounding the death - but she's not the best possible witness. Harding, Paul: "The Confession of Brother Athelstan" (original) A supposedly friendly joust between two unfriendly knights ends in a death when an unblunted lance is planted on one of the combatants; Athelstan and Cranston go back on duty, having been spectators. [Set during John of Gaunt's regency for Richard II.] Mathieson, Theodore: "Leonardo da Vinci, Detective" Mathieson wrote a series of these, each using the special abilities of a different historical character to tackle a mystery. Leonardo, past sixty, is surprised at a summons from the Queen to investigate a murder, but his insatiable curiosity extends even to this. Peters, Ellis: "The Price of Light" - a Brother Cadfael story from _A Rare Benedictine_ (see). Pulver, Mary Monica: "Father Hugh and the Deadly Scythe" (This author is the half of 'Margaret Frazer' who left the team; Hugh is a 15th-century priest in Oxfordshire, but the convent involved isn't Frevisse's.) PART III: REGENCY AND GASLIGHT Butler, Raymond: "Captain Nash and the Wroth Inheritance" - see reviews of the novel of this name (this is it - it's a short novel, not a short story). Carr, John Dickson: "The Gentleman from Paris" Locked-room tribute to Edgar Allan Poe, written in the form of a letter. Harrison, Michael: "Murder in the Rue Royale" picks up Poe's detective Dupin. de la Torre, Lillian: "Murder Lock'd In" - a Dr. Sam: Johnson story not appearing in either _Dr. Sam: Johnson, Detector_ or _The Detections of Dr. Sam Johnson_, in which Boswell (the narrator, his real-life biographer) first met him. Hoch, Edward D.: "The Golden Nugget Poker Game" features Hoch's western gunman Ben Snow in Yukon territory in 1898. Post, Melville Davisson: "The Doomdorf Mystery" features Post's early 19th-century Virginia gentleman, the narrator's uncle Abner, finding Doomdorf shot dead in his cabin, and the only two people around both confessed - but neither knew how he'd died, so what happened? Rafferty, S.S.: "The Christmas Masque" A Captain Cork story set at Christmas, 1754 (about the middle of the series). His sidekick and business associate likes celebrating it in New York rather than Puritan Connecticut, as long as they don't celebrate till February, or neglect business too much for this puzzle-solving sideline. (See Rafferty's _Fatal Flourishes_ collection for more.) PART IV: HOLMES AND BEYOND Doyle, Adrian Conan: "The Case of the Deptford Horror" - from _The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes_, part of Doyle's efforts to continue his father's work. Stevens, R.L. (aka Edward D. Hoch): "Five Rings in Reno" Alternate history in which Arthur Conan Doyle accepted an invitation to Reno to referee a heavyweight championship fight. (Offer really happened, but he backed out in our timeline.) An appendix, "The Chroniclers of Crime: The Forerunners of Sherlock Holmes" is a timeline of fictional detectives' activities from 2000 BC (Christie's _Death Comes as the End_) to 1870 AD. An afterword "Old-Time Detection" by Arthur Griffiths discusses the development of *real* detection in history.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
HISTORICAL WHODUNITS ed. by Mike Ashley,
By thepaxdomini "The Book Review" (Tulsa, OK) - See all my reviews Many of these stories were written specifically for this volume. Unfortunately, quite a few of these stories aren't very good. Often, the historical setting has nothing to do with the mystery, and is just used to set up the MacGuffin. Furthermore, the majority of these stories are not ones where the reader can follow along and guess at the culprit. Rather, it seems that many authors were more interested in thinking of ridiculous scenarios, which their protagonists would then explain. There is a great proliferation here of authors using both other authors' characters and real historical figures. Poe's Dupin and Doyle's Holmes appear here in stories from other authors, and other detectives include Leonardo da Vinci, Poe himself, and William Shakespeare. There are a couple of good stories here, and some good authors, but a great many of the stories in this volume aren't particularly interesting. I suppose they can't all be Cadfael.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
HISTORICAL WHODUNITS ed. by Mike Ashley,
By thepaxdomini "The Book Review" (Tulsa, OK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Historical Whodunits (Hardcover)
This volume, published in 1993 as The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunits and in 1997 as Historical Whodunits, contains 23 historical (that is, set before the author was born) mysteries. The foreword is by Ellis Peters, who discusses how she created the Cadfael character.
Many of these stories were written specifically for this volume. Unfortunately, quite a few of these stories aren't very good. Often, the historical setting has nothing to do with the mystery, and is just used to set up the MacGuffin. Furthermore, the majority of these stories are not ones where the reader can follow along and guess at the culprit. Rather, it seems that many authors were more interested in thinking of ridiculous scenarios, which their protagonists would then explain. There is a great proliferation here of authors using both other authors' characters and real historical figures. Poe's Dupin and Doyle's Holmes appear here in stories from other authors, and other detectives include Leonardo da Vinci, Poe himself, and William Shakespeare. There are a couple of good stories here, and some good authors, but a great many of the stories in this volume aren't particularly interesting. I suppose they can't all be Cadfael.
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