The Reader's Shelf—Beyond Sherlock Holmes: British Crime Fiction

The American writer Edgar Allan Poe is often considered the father of crime fiction as we know it. But starting with Sherlock Holmes, the fictional character created by Arthur Conan Doyle at the end of the 19th century, British writers soon took the genre to great heights, peaking in the 1920s and 1930s, mystery’s “Golden Age,” with Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers as the chief purveyors of detective fiction. Today, there is a new golden era of high-quality traditional mysteries, authored by both UK and U.S. writers, that feature atmospheric and historical British settings, as well as strong characters and sophisticated plots.

Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes was a confirmed bachelor. However, Laurie R. King has created a “fictitious” wife for Holmes’s later years, the intrepid Mary Russell, who, at an early age, becomes an informal student of Holmes and later his independent and scholarly spouse. Together, the two sleuths sharpen their considerable deductive powers through conversation and battles of intellect. There are currently six novels in the series, starting with The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (Bantam. 2002. ISBN 0-553-38152-0. pap. $12).

In Barbara Cleverly’s award-winning debut, The Last Kashmiri Rose (Dell. 2003. ISBN 0-440-24156-1. pap. $6.99), Inspector Joe Sandilands is a Scotland Yard detective and former soldier, now on temporary posting to India during the 1920s. As Sandilands investigates the murders of five British officers’ wives, the author paints a vivid portrait of the beginnings of forensic police work in an exotic setting where violence lies just underneath the proper veneer of British colonialism.

Embodying the Victorian woman explorer is Elizabeth Peters’s intrepid Egyptologist and amateur sleuth Amelia Peabody. Starting with Crocodile In The Sandbank (Mysterious. 1998. ISBN 0-445-40651-8. pap. $7.50), in which Amelia travels to Egypt where she meets and marries archaeologist Radcliffe Emerson, ancient and contemporary crimes traverse the more than a dozen books in the series, as do such geopolitical realities as colonial wars and international espionage.

Maisie Dobbs (Penguin. 2004. ISBN 0-14-200433-2. pap. $14), Jacqueline Winspear’s acclaimed series debut, follows a former servant girl and World War I nurse as she adjusts to peacetime and a society still dubious of professional women, let alone female private investigators. The past of the Great War is never far from Maisie as she attempts to uncover the truth behind the deaths of several wounded soldiers.

Charles Todd—actually a mother-and-son writing team—continues to add to a series revolving around another detective newly returned as well from the Great War. Todd’s Scotland Yard inspector Ian Rutledge, first seen in A Test Of Wills (o.p.), is suffering the long-term effects of shell shock. He must battle inner demons while outwardly dealing with crimes in a nation gone gray with loss and moral uncertainty.

Victorian England’s attitudes and mores, as well as London’s dark shadows, are well depicted in Anne Perry’s two Victorian detective series. The first, featuring Inspector Thomas Pitt and his wife, Charlotte, debuted with The Cater Street Hangman (Fawcett. 1985. ISBN 0-449-20867-2. pap. $6.99). The second series, with police detective and later private investigator William Monk, is set in the London of a few decades earlier, with the initial volume being The Face Of A Stranger (Ivy: Ballantine. 1991. ISBN 0-8041-0858-7. pap. $6.99).

Jane Austen herself “stars” as a sleuth in Stephanie Barron’s sprightly series that re-creates well-structured plots and social intrigue set in English country houses—the hallmark of Austen’s fiction. The debut, Jane And The Unpleasantness At Scargrave Manor (Bantam. 1996. ISBN 0-553-57593-7. pap. $6.99), finds Miss Austen using her acute powers of observation as a natural tool for detecting the crime beneath genteel Regency façades.

The Bow Street Runners, founded by novelist and magistrate Henry Fielding (of Tom Jones fame), could be considered the first professional constables and were the precursors to Scotland Yard. Fielding’s blind brother John took over as chief magistrate at London’s Bow Street Court in 1754. Sir John’s fictional—and eponymous—counterpart is at the heart of Bruce Alexander’s rousing 18th-century historical series, launched by the aptly titled Blind Justice (Berkley. 1995. ISBN 0-425-15007-0. pap. $6.99).

The intrigues of the Tudor court give ample opportunity for fictional sleuths. Susannah, Lady Appleton, herbalist and wife to one of Queen Elizabeth’s courtiers, debuts in Face Down Upon An Herbal (Minotaur: St. Martin’s. 1998. ISBN 0-312-18092-6. $21.95). Poisonings, serial killers, philandering husbands, and treason are just a few of the situations confronting the intelligent Lady Appleton.