Art History Thrillers

When 28-year-old San Francisco Daily Morning Call reporter Mark Twain met Tom Sawyer at a local bathhouse in 1863, he was seeking a subject for his first novel. As Twain steamed, played cards, and drank beer with Sawyer (a volunteer firefighter, customs inspector, and local hero responsible for having saved 90 lives at sea), he had second thoughts about Shirley Tempest, his proposed book about a local girl firefighter, and began to envision a novel of wider scope.

An entertaining history of British thrillers from Casino Royale to The Eagle Has Landed, in which award-winning crime writer Mike Ripley reveals that, though Britain may have lost an empire, her thrillers helped save the world. With a foreword by Lee Child.

Do you want to learn more about how the great literary detective Sherlock Holmes was born and how Arthur Conan Doyle came to create him, but don’t have time to listen to huge, long biographies? Then let The History Journals take you on an hourly history tour of his life. Now fascinating as Sherlock Holmes undoubtedly is, and this journal will certainly take you on a journey of discovery following in the great man’s footsteps, there’s another story here, most certainly worthy of your attention.