Historical Detective Mystery

London, 1945. The capital is shrouded in the darkness of the blackout, and mystery abounds in the parks after dusk. During a stroll through Regent's Park, Bruce Mallaig witnesses two men acting suspiciously around a footbridge. In a matter of moments, one of them has been murdered; Mallaig's view of the assailant but a brief glimpse of a ghastly face in the glow of a struck match. The murderer's noiseless approach and escape seems to defy all logic, and even the victim's identity is quickly thrown into uncertainty.

World War II rages on across Europe, but Maggie Hope has finally found a moment of rest on the pastoral coast of western Scotland. Home from an undercover mission in Berlin, she settles down to teach at her old spy training camp, and to heal from scars on both her body and heart. Yet instead of enjoying the quieter pace of life, Maggie is quickly drawn into another web of danger and intrigue.

1930. The tranquillity of suburban Craynebrook is disturbed when a lifeless and nameless body is found dumped on the local common. Enter newly promoted Detective Inspector Matthew Stannard, a policeman with a reputation that precedes him and which threatens to drag him down. As Matthew embarks on his investigation, an another, more sinister plot demands his attention. One by one, members of an esteemed social club are meeting an untimely demise, leaving their community in a state of panic that they might be next.

Revered mystery writer Josephine Tey is traveling from Scotland to London for the final week of her play Richard of Bordeaux, the surprise hit of the season, with pacifist themes that resonate in a world still haunted by war. But joy turns to horror when her arrival coincides with the murder of a young woman she had befriended on the train ride - and Tey is plunged into a mystery as puzzling as any in her own works.

Sent by the War Office to follow the notorious Black Panther, file clerk turned secret agent Fiona Figg is under strict orders not to get too close and not to wear any of her usual “get-ups”. But what self-respecting British spy can resist a good disguise? Within hours of her arrival in Paris, Fiona is up to her fake eyebrows in missing maids, jewel thieves, double agents, and high treason.

Like your mysteries cozy and set during the Golden Age of Crime? This is the first audiobook in the Posie Parker mysteries, although this novel can be enjoyed as a stand-alone story in its own right. Set in London in 1921, Murder Offstage is full of intrigue and red herrings. When Posie Parker’s childhood friend is robbed of a priceless jewel and becomes a suspect in a cold-blooded murder case, budding detective Posie vows she will clear his name.

At Academy Absconditi, classes include everything from knife-throwing and poisons to the art of deception. The other students are all children of the world's most elite strategists, in training to become assassins, spies, and master manipulators. November Adley doesn't know why she's been sent to this place, but she'll quickly discover that allies are few in a school where competition is everything. When another student is murdered, all eyes turn to November, who must figure out exactly how she fits in before she is found guilty of the crime...or becomes the killer's next victim.

Mrs. Laetitia Rodd, aged 52, is the widow of an archdeacon who makes her living as a highly discreet private investigator. Her brother, Frederick Tyson, is a criminal barrister living in nearby Highgate with his wife and 10 children. Frederick finds the cases, and Laetitia solves them using her arch intelligence and her immaculate cover as an unsuspecting widow. When a case arises involving the son of the highly connected Sir James Calderstone, Laetitia sets off for Lincolnshire undercover as the family's new governess.

Charles Lenox has received a cryptic plea for help from an old Harrow schoolmate, Gerald Leigh, but when he looks into the matter he finds that his friend has suddenly disappeared. As boys they had shared a secret: a bequest from a mysterious benefactor had smoothed Leigh's way into the world after the death of his father. Lenox, already with a passionate interest in detective work, made discovering the benefactor's identity his first case - but was never able to solve it.

Published in January 1922, The Secret Adversary is the second detective fiction novel by British crime novelist Agatha Christie. The book introduces the characters of Tommy Beresford and Prudence Tuppence Cowley, two out-of-work 20-somethings in post-war London. The two agree to form The Young Adventurers, Ltd, hiring themselves out with the slogan no reasonable offer refused. They are quickly enlisted to solve the mysterious disappearance of a young woman who was entrusted with sensitive diplomatic documents amid the sinking of the RMS Lusitania.

It's June 1814, and the royal families of Austria, Russia, and the German states have gathered in London at the Prince Regent's invitation to celebrate the defeat of Napoleon and the restoration of monarchical control throughout Europe. But the festive atmosphere is marred one warm summer evening by the brutal murder of a disgraced British nobleman long thought dead.

When junior barrister Daniel Pitt is summoned to the scene of a murder in the slum area known as Mile End, he knows only that the victim is a senior barrister from his firm. To Daniel's relief, it is not his close friend Toby Kitteridge, but the question remains: What was this respected colleague doing in Mile End? The firm's head, Marcus fford Croft, may know more than he admits, but fford Croft's memory is not what it used to be. And so Daniel and Kitteridge must investigate on their own, lest the police uncover something they should not.

During the height of the Great War, playboy Prince Harry, the third in line to the British throne, vanishes in thin air while horseback riding in Hyde Park The strikingly handsome playboy prince is initially believed to have arranged his disappearance so he can enjoy a brief rendezvous with one of his secret lovers. But when his absence continues on for days, the royal family grows concerned and summons Scotland Yard, who can only recover scant, unrevealing clues.

In the summer of 1914 a boy vanishes, never to be seen again. Now, in 1920, the once esteemed Stilwell family of Darkacre Hall find themselves struggling with the legacy of the First World War. Leonard bears the physical scars, while his brother Maurice has endured more than his mind can take. Maurice’s wife Ida yearns for the lost days of privilege and pleasure and family friend Victor seems unwilling to move on. But their lives are thrown into further disarray when the missing boy’s case is reopened – and this time they themselves are under police scrutiny.

1937. War with Germany is dawning, and a civil war already raging in Spain. Split across political lines, the six Mitford sisters are more divided than ever. Meanwhile their former maid Louisa Cannon is now a private detective, working with her policeman husband Guy Sullivan.

In 1890, the first Japanese diplomatic delegation arrives in London to open an embassy. Cyrus Barker, private enquiry agent and occasional agent for the Foreign Service Office, is enlisted to display his personal Japanese garden to the visiting dignitaries. Later that night, Ambassador Toda is shot and killed in his office and Cyrus Barker is discovered across the street, watching the very same office, in possession of a revolver with one spent cartridge.

1934 was a pivotal year in the ongoing battle between the FBI and America's most famous outlaws - it was a year of giant personalities and huge shoot-outs, and it marked the deaths of John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, and Pretty Boy Floyd, among others. But that year, FBI agent Sam Cowley's priority was to nab the most dangerous gangster this country has ever produced, a man so violent he scared Al Capone and was booted from the Chicago mob - Baby Face Nelson.

When a Hungarian immigrant is dismembered near London's River Thames, Commander Monk is called to the eerie scene, where 16 candles surround the corpse. As identical murders pop up around the city, Monk confronts the unsettling options: could it be the work of a secret society? A serial madman? Or is a xenophobic Brit targeting foreigners? A local doctor who speaks Hungarian from his days on the battlefield may be able to help, but his own struggles with post-traumatic stress have left his memory in shambles.

In Corridors of the Night, nurse Hester Monk and her husband, William, commander of the Thames River Police, do desperate battle with two obsessed scientists who, in the name of healing, have turned to homicide. The monomaniacal Rand brothers - Magnus, a cunning doctor, and Hamilton, a genius chemist - are utterly ruthless in their pursuit of a cure for the fatal "white-blood disease".

Cambridgeshire, September 1813: Detective Stephen Lavender and Constable Ned Woods are lured to an isolated estate in the deadly marshland surrounding Ely, to investigate a murder.