Tag Archives: historical murder mysteries

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Amy Patricia Meade is becoming one of my favorite authors. In this outing, she offers us Rosie the Riveter.

Rosie has taken on the job at the Brooklyn shipyards, along with several other women, because of the pay. The more ‘ladylike’ jobs do not pay as well and Rosie is supporting her widowed sister and baby. The male riveters don’t want the women there but Rosie is managing.

When her foreman makes a pass at her, promising a promotion, she clocks him in the head with the telephone. The next day his body is discovered in a nearby alley. Rosie is the prime suspect. She begins to investigate, finding a surprise ally in the police lieutenant investigating the case.

Roșie discovers several people wanted the foreman dead. The solution rests in a very nice twist. I would love to read the sequel but unfortunately it is unavailable.

Highly Recommended.

I also read Million Dollar Baby by Meade. Marjorie, an attractive mystery writer, catches the eye of wealthy British heir, Creighton Ashcroft. The house he is renovating is the site of a suicide, a mysterious death, and a missing diamond. When Ashcroft invites Marjorie to tour the house, they find a body.

A handsome policeman arrives to investigate – and Marjorie is immediately interested. Ashcroft is jealous and annoyed, but the three must work together to solve the mystery.

Another winner!

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I thought I’d read all of the Holmes/Russell mysteries, only to discover this one; A Letter of Mary.

Mary Russell and her husband, retired detective Sherlock Holmes, receive an old friend and archaeologist at their Sussex estate. Dorothy Ruskin presents them with an old manuscript that she excavated in Palestine. It appears to be from Mary Magdalene and suggests she is one of Jesus’s apostles. The letter appears genuine but surely it couldn’t be. Could it?

Both Russell and Holmes are bored with their current lives and agree to look into the letter further. Then Dorothy Ruskin is murdered. Now the case suddenly achieves significant more importance. The game is afoot!

Although it is a bit of a stretch to imagine Sherlock Holmes married, these books work. I particularly enjoy the antiquated style Laurie King employs; it is so appropriate to the era. Besides, I love the archeological mysteries; Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody mysteries are still among my favorites.

This also has a clever mystery. Highly Recommended.

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L.A. Chandlar is the moderator for my Murderous March panel, The Reluctant Sleuth, on March 9. Since I will be reading all the books for my panel mates, I decided to read hers as well.

The Silver Gun.

Chandlar’s series, The Silver Gun is the first, is called the Art Deco mysteries. They take place in the late 1930’s in New York City. This is after Jimmie Walker and Tamany Hall. Fiorella LaGuardia is currently mayor and on a mission to clean up the city.

Lane has been his assistant for six months. Life is exciting as she rushes around, trying to keep up with his schedule. But then she is thrust onto the subway tracks right in front of an oncoming train. Then she realizes a gangster is following her. He doesn’t trouble to hide it, grinning at her and making threatening gestures.

What is going on? Lane had to understand her own past, and the mystery of her parents’ deaths, before she can figure out why the gangsters have targeted her.

An illicit romance with a mysterious many further complicates Lane’s life.

This is a lot of fun. Recommended.

Curetes (Kouretes)

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One of the challenges of writing historical fiction, especially historical fiction that takes place as long ago as Bronze Age Crete, is the difficulty of sorting through the various myths – and the various iterations of the myths. I’ve already discussed the conflation of Zeus and Dionysus in that they share an origin story. When the tribes of mainland Greece swept over Crete after the Santorini volcanic eruption, they adopted much of the Cretan culture. Then they adapted what they’d taken to suit themselves.

Since we are familiar with the Classical Greek myths, so familiar in some case we have internalized them, we think of them as the ‘correct’ stories. Dionysus’s origin story, which became Zeus’s, is one such.

The outlines of Zeus’s story are this. Since it was predicted that one of Cronus’ children would kill him and take his position, he swallowed all of his children as soon as they were born. To protect Zeus, his mother Rhea wrapped a stone in a swaddling cloth (which Cronus swallowed) and the baby was hidden in a cave in Mt. Ida.

In the Cretan myth, it is Dionysus that is hidden in the cave. Each was described as suckled by either a nanny goat or a sow. To hide the baby’s cries, Kouretes made noise.

Who are the Kouretes? If you google the name, they are described as crested, armored warriors who clash their shields together so Cronus can’t hear the baby crying.

But this is not the whole story. According to an earlier myth, the Curetes were the first inhabitants of the Greek island of Crete. They were mythical creatures, specifically legendary benign deities who lived prior to the Minoans. According to an early Greek myth, the Kouretes were not born. They sprang out of the earth of Crete when the infant Zeus wept and his tears fell on the ground.

In this version, they made a hanging cradle for Zeus so he was not of the Earth, the sky, or the sea. He was therefore well protected from Cronus.

Because these are myths, and all things are possible, the Kouretes are supposed to have invented hunting, the first bow, dance, and even the Olympic Games.