A combination of two of our favorite genres. If you love immersing yourself in the story of another time and place, but you also like a slice of mystery then this reading list for you! Enjoy 10 Dazzling Historical Mystery Books to Read.
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10 Dazzling Historical Mystery Books to Read
The Night Manager by John le Carré
Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
The Night Manager by John le Carré
At the start of it all, Jonathan Pine is merely the night manager at a luxury hotel. But when a single attempt to pass on information to the British authorities – about an international businessman at the hotel with suspicious dealings – backfires terribly and people close to Pine begin to die, he commits himself to a battle against powerful forces he cannot begin to imagine.
In a chilling tale of corrupt intelligence agencies, billion-dollar price tags and the truth of the brutal arms trade, John le Carre creates a claustrophobic world in which no one can be trusted.
Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
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Montserrat has always been overlooked. She’s a talented sound editor, but she’s left out of the boys’ club running the film industry in ’90s Mexico City.
Then her best friend Tristán introduces her to his new neighbour – cult horror director Abel Urueta, who promises that he can change all of their lives, if only they’ll help him finish what he claims is a cursed film by a Nazi occultist.
Disbelieving, but with nothing to lose, Montserrat and Tristán agree to help. However, as they work together to unravel the mystery of the film and its obscure creator, the pair might find out that sorcerers and magic are not only the stuff of movies . . .
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Hidden in the heart of the old city of Barcelona is the ‘Cemetery of Lost Books’, a labyrinthine library of obscure and forgotten titles that have long gone out of print. To this library, a man brings his 10-year-old son Daniel one cold morning in 1945. Daniel is allowed to choose one book from the shelves and pulls out ‘The Shadow of the Wind’ by Julian Carax.
But as he grows up, several people seem inordinately interested in his find. Then, one night, as he is wandering the old streets once more, Daniel is approached by a figure who reminds him of a character from the book, a character who turns out to be the devil. This man is tracking down every last copy of Carax’s work in order to burn them. What begins as a case of literary curiosity turns into a race to find out the truth behind the life and death of Julian Carax and to save those he left behind…
A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee
Calcutta, 1919: the massacre of Amritsar is fuelling civil unrest and tensions are running high.
Into the fray steps Captain Sam Wyndham, morphine addicted and a troubled veteran of the Great War, he is desperate for a fresh start in Calcutta’s police force.
He is soon called to the scene of a horrifying murder. The victim was a senior official, and a note in his mouth warns the British to leave India – or else.
With the stability of the Empire under threat, Wyndham and Sergeant “Surrender-not” Banerjee must solve the case quickly.
But there are some who will do anything to stop them…
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
Scotland Yard inspector Alan Grant, recovering from a broken leg, becomes fascinated with a contemporary portrait of Richard III, believed to have brutally killed his brother’s children – the Princes in the Tower – to make his crown secure. But is the hunchback with such a sensitive, noble face really one of the world’s most heinous villains? Or was he the victim of one of the most insidious plots in history?
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
The year is 1327.
Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate.
When his delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths, Brother William turns detective. He collects evidence, deciphers secret symbols and coded manuscripts, and digs into the eerie labyrinth of the abbey where extraordinary things are happening under the over of night.
A spectacular popular and critical success, The Name of the Rose is not only a narrative of a murder investigation but an astonishing chronicle of the Middle Ages.
Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
1971, New York City. Trash piles up on the streets, crime is at an all-time high, the city is going bankrupt, and a shooting war has broken out between the NYPD and the Black Liberation Army. Furniture store owner and ex-fence Ray Carney is trying to keep his head down, his business up and his life straight. But then he needs Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter May and he decides to hit up an old police contact, who wants favours in return. For Ray, staying out of the game gets a lot more complicated – and deadly.
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
Born in America and raised in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd is a liability to his social-climbing flapper mother, Salome. When he starts work in the household of Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo – where the Bolshevik leader, Lev Trotsky, is also being harboured as a political exile – he inadvertently casts his lot with art, communism and revolution.
A compulsive diarist, he records and relates his colourful experiences of life with Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Trotsky in the midst of the Mexican revolution. A violent upheaval sends him back to America; but political winds continue to throw him between north and south, in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach – the lacuna – between truth and public presumption
March Violets by Philip Kerr
Bernhard Gunther is a private eye, specializing in missing persons. And in Hitler’s Berlin, he’s never short of work…
Winter 1936. A man and his wife shot dead in their bed. The woman’s father, a millionaire industrialist, wants justice – and the priceless diamonds that disappeared along with his daughter’s life.As Bernie follows the trail into the very heart of Nazi Germany, he’s forced to confront a horrifying conspiracy. A trail that ends in the hell that is Dachau…
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Fingersmith is an extraordinary, ingenious tale of fraud, insanity and secrets.
London 1862. Sue Trinder, orphaned at birth, grows up among petty thieves – fingersmiths – under the rough but loving care of Mrs Sucksby and her ‘family’. But from the moment Sue draws breath, her fate is linked to that of another orphan growing up in a gloomy mansion not too many miles away.
If you enjoyed 10 Dazzling Historical Mystery Books to Read, check out 12 Great WW2 Historical Fiction Books to Read