In honor of the release of my noir detective series on Kindle Vella, Paradise Aside: A Jazz Noir Mystery, this month’s genre to share is Historical Detective Fiction. Historical Detective, Historical Crime, or Historical Mystery Fiction, is a very popular genre that is experiencing a new golden age. It is a broad genre with many subgenres and is difficult to make recommendations for a particular reader without knowing the specifics of their interests.
Interests vary based on several factors. Time period: Anywhere from ancient to relatively modern times. Location: Which can be very specific (specific London or New York neighborhoods) or general (western United States, the high seas). Detective(s): Municipal, private professional, or amateur; solo, partners, or team; male, female, or combination. Level of graphic violence. And much more.
Sharing Great Stories
One benefit of knowing other readers of a genre you like is sharing some stories and series you have loved and some you are checking out. My interests are highly varied, so I have read extensively in many of the subgenres within historical mystery/detective fiction. For you, dear readers of this blog and newsletter, I’ll assume your main interest is the nineteenth and early twentieth century US. Though these constraints narrow the field significantly (UK based stories are the most popular), I will recommend a binge-worthy series and a blockbuster novel that fits that description.
Historical Detective Fiction
I mentioned earlier that the genre is experiencing a new golden age, which means there must have been a previous golden age. The Golden Age of Detective Fiction, although not specifically historical fiction, occurred in the 1920s and 1930s with authors and characters familiar to most fans of detective fiction: Like G. K. Chesterton and Dame Agatha Christie in the UK, Georges Simenon in Belgium, and in the US, Ellery Queen and Erle Stanley Gardner, and the hard-boiled writers like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. The popularity of these books and series is evidenced by their frequent adaptations (and re-adaptations) to film.
Although the settings of many of these works were contemporary or recent history for their authors, they are now historical for us. So, I include them in my mix tape. The main difference compared to modern works is that the writing style is more formal and the plots build more slowly in the classics. This puts off many modern readers, but I enjoy the more linear storytelling of the classics.
Wikipedia has a convenient, though limited, list of fictional historical detectives.
I’ve read books by several of the authors listed, but not nearly as many as I would have thought. The genre is just too broad to read widely—so many books—but I try.
Now, let’s look at a few great works in the genre.
Classic Historical Mystery Fiction
Possibly the most recognized classic works in the genre (constrained to the US) are the noir classic, The Maltese Falcon, and light detective series, The Thin Man, by Dashiell Hammett. I mentioned these classics last month as essential research material for my own Vella series, Paradise Aside.
Louis L’Amour Crime Stories
For westerns fans, there are many Louis L’Amour western novels and short stories that include a significant mystery/investigation element. However, the classic western often involves a known “bad guy” who the hero must catch him in the act or draw him out of his comfortable hole (usually after dispatching all their hired gunmen). So the mystery isn’t whodunnit, but how the hero will draw him out and survive.
L’Amour also wrote straight-up detective fiction, too, mostly for the pulp magazines of his era. L’Amour wrote so many stories and they have been collected in so many anthologies, it’s hard to find just one, but a great collection of stories that shows L’Amour’s breadth with “crime stories” is The Collected Short Stories of Louis L’Amour, Volume 6, Crime Stories.
From the publisher: One of America’s most beloved storytellers, Louis L’Amour’s vibrant tales of adventure bring the American West to life. Now, in this sixth volume of collected short stories, L’Amour takes us beyond the frontier with thirty-three gripping stories of crime, sports, and the murky world where the two often meet. From suspenseful whodunits to rueful tales of fortunes gained and lost, this remarkable collection will enthrall and entertain L’Amour fans old and new.
Traversing a vivid landscape, from sunblasted hills and canyons to the nighttime streets of America’s greatest cities, some of Louis L’Amour’s most compelling fiction was set in his own time—whether in the naked electric glare of boxing rings where men go head-to-head with their dreams and demons in an underworld rife with corruption, or along freight docks where laborers toil to earn just enough to get by, or in the penthouses of the rich and arrogant who calculate the odds of how to get even more. Here are tales of innocents caught in the schemes of criminals, detectives hunting down truths that hide more lies, gamblers and beauties, wiseguys and cops. Here is a world populated by the kinds of people who risk their lives to right a wrong, make a buck, or save a friend.
A war veteran makes a journey to visit the man who saved his life in Korea. Instead, he uncovers a killing and finds his own heroic cause…. Confronted with an easy chance to steal, an honest man gives in to temptation—and finds himself ensnared in a web of blackmail and violence… An elderly Hawaiian seafarer is found dead with a hand-carved figure beside his body. Unraveling his murder will mean solving the mystery of a shipwreck—and of the forces that drive some to take fatal chances and others to kill.
Brimming with thought-provoking characters and situations—from a man who awakens from unconsciousness to find a fortune in a burning house to a man who meets a killer who is supposed to be dead in a seedy diner—these thrilling, atmospheric stories course with authenticity and bear the mark of a timeless master.
The Alienist
The Alienist by Caleb Carr is a fantastic novel from 1994 that was made into a TV series. It is a great stand-alone book, but is also book 1 of 2, with Angel of Darkness, in the Dr. Lazlo Kreizler series.
From the publisher: The year is 1896. The city is New York. Newspaper reporter John Schuyler Moore is summoned by his friend Dr. Laszlo Kreizler—a psychologist, or “alienist”—to view the horribly mutilated body of an adolescent boy abandoned on the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge. From there, the two embark on a revolutionary effort in criminology: creating a psychological profile of the perpetrator based on the details of his crimes. Their dangerous quest takes them into the tortured past and twisted mind of a murderer who will kill again before their hunt is over.
Fast-paced and riveting, infused with historical detail, The Alienist conjures up Gilded Age New York, with its tenements and mansions, corrupt cops and flamboyant gangsters, shining opera houses and seamy gin mills. It is an age in which questioning society’s belief that all killers are born, not made, could have unexpected and fatal consequences.
What’s to love about this book and series? There are a few different methods for novels to share the process of discovering clues and suspects in detective fiction. The Alienist uses a less common method in historical detective fiction, which is to concentrate on the profile of the suspect, then find suspects who match the profile. This was innovative in fiction in 1994 and even more so in police work in 1896. Angel of Darkness is also worth reading. However, The Alienist is the standout best of the two novels. I have not seen the TV series, so cannot recommend it one way or another.
Here are a few links to help you find the novel and mini-series:
The Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch Series
The Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch series by Robert B. Parker (of the Spenser series fame) is an example of what a top-notch detective fiction author can do with westerns. From the publisher:
Everett Hitch and Virgil Cole are lawmen and friends who share the brutal hardships of an emerging West. But the courage that has defined them is challenged by a man without conscience or remorse. Now, Hitch and Cole have followed him to the small town of Appaloosa.
What follows is a dance of wills where villains are cast in shades of gray, where heroes hide in the blackest shadows, where women can betray with frightening ease, and where Hitch and Cole will discover the price of responsibility, honor, and loyalty in the Old West.
What’s to love about this series? Hitch and Cole are complex characters with a complex friendship, but their version of justice is simple: “We are the law.” Virgil’s perpetual love-struck trouble might make you want to pull your hair out, but it is classic western hero trouble. The partners work through their sometimes troubled friendship while they work the bad guys over into making critical mistakes.
In classic western style, the heroes border on being outlaws, but their cause is just when they dispense their western justice. I’ve read the first 8 or 9 books in the series but can only recommend the first 4 by Robert B. Parker. You might try one or two by Robert Knott and continue if you like his style and plots. They were different enough that I lost interest. However, I can recommend the movies based on the books.
Here are a few links to help you find the series:
Paradise Aside
You might be more familiar with the historical fiction I write and promote set in the American West of the late nineteenth century. But I also enjoy the detective stories that became popular in the 1930s, stories like The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man series by Dashiell Hammett, mentioned earlier.
My Kindle Vella series, Paradise Aside: A Jazz Noir Mystery, tells such a story with a bit of a twist. Private detective Dan Diamond discovers the murdered body of a young man, Amory Blaine. Since Dan is between cases and struggling to meet the rent on the office, he takes the case, hoping to find a client who will pay him to solve it or bury it with the body.
The story and perspective alternates between Amory’s final weeks leading up to his murder and Dan’s investigation. Amory’s perspective is that of a rich kid whose family has seen better times. Dan’s is that of the hard-boiled, seen-it-all private detective. The two stories and perspectives collide when Dan confronts Amory’s murderer.
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Also Now on Kindle Vella
If you enjoy westerns or mid-twentieth-century adventure fiction, you might enjoy Missouri Compromise: A Young Trapper’s Tale* on Kindle Vella.
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