detective fiction

historical mystery

Book Reviews

T.C. Van Adler: St. Agatha's Breast
- an irreverent tale of murder, sex, and art in a Roman monastery
Michael David Anthony: Dark Provenance
- a mystery set amidst English Church politics
E.F. Benson: The Luck of the Vails
- a turn of the century mystery set among the English aristocracy
Marshall Browne: Inspector Anders
The Wooden Leg of Inspector Anders; Inspector Anders and the Ship of Fools
Marshall Browne: Rendezvous at Kamakura Inn
- a Japanese policeman faces corruption, mystery and violence
Andrea Camilleri: The Terracotta Dog
- a Sicilian detective takes a historical excursion
Patricia Cornwell: Hornet's Nest
- a combined police-procedural and romance
Garry Disher: Straight, Bent and Barbara Vine
- short Australian crime fiction
Mark Haddon: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
- an autistic teenager investigates the murder of a dog
Tony Hillerman: The First Eagle
- Jim Chee finds a Hopi eagle poacher next to a dead police officer
Peter Høeg: Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow
- an atmospheric thriller set in Copenhagen and Greenland
Arnaldur Indridason: Tainted Blood
- an Icelandic murder mystery
P.D. James: The Murder Room
- a Dalgliesh mystery: classical detective fiction
Okamoto Kido: The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi
- detective stories set in Edo Japan
John Le Carré: The Constant Gardener
- a thriller about the drug industry in Africa
Henry F. Mazel: Murderously Incorrect*
- off-beat New York PI Alex Rada gets involved with politics
James Melville: The Bogus Buddha*
- a superintendent Otani mystery, set in Japan
Leslie O'Kane: The Cold Hard Fax
- a frivolously light-hearted mystery
Sara Paretsky: Blacklist
- PI Warshawski digs up some dirt from the 1950s
Iain Pears: The Immaculate Deception
- a mystery of Italian art and politics
Daniel Pennac: The Scapegoat
- crime fiction set in the Belleville quarter of Paris
Arturo Perez-Reverte: The Flanders Panel
Ian Rankin: A Good Hanging and Other Stories
- twelve Inspector Rebus stories
Ruth Rendell: Adam and Eve and Pinch Me
Ruth Rendell: The Babes in the Wood
- Inspector Wexford hunts missing children amid floods
Ruth Rendell: Talking to Strange Men
Dorothy L. Sayers: Great Tales of Detection
Nineteen Stories
Leonardo Sciascia: The Knight and Death*
Three Novellas
Victor Segalen: René Leys*
- a mystery set in Peking in 1911, at the end of Manchu China
Maj Sjöwall, Per Wahlöö: The Laughing Policeman
- a mass murder mystery set in 1967 Stockholm
Alexander McCall Smith: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
- Botswana's only female private investigator at work
John F. X. Sundman: Acts of the Apostles
- an infotech conspiracy thriller with real tech
Paul Thomas: Guerilla Season
- a comic thriller about terrorism in New Zealand
Manuel Vázquez Montalbán: The Buenos Aires Quintet
- tango and the disappeared: PI Pepe Carvalho in Argentina
Minette Walters: The Shape of Snakes
- a compelling and original murder mystery
Morris West: Daughter of Silence
- legal fiction with a dash of mystery
Fred Yager, Jan Yager: Untimely Death
- a fast-paced psychological thriller set in Manhattan

See also: crime | fiction | war fiction