Historical Fiction Stars - Mystery, Suspense, Thrillers and Crime Fiction: 2003

Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless otherwise noted.

Historical fiction is loosely defined on this page - a book set 25 years ago may qualify for inclusion.

• The Price of Murder
  Author: Alexander, Bruce
  Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399150781 Date: 2003
  Booklist
  Celebrated as "a rich, rewarding trip for everyone" "(The New York Times), this Fielding mystery is a stunning combination of dynamic characterization and intriguing plotlines set against the colorful backdrop of Georgian London.
  Updated 9.22.03
• Mr. Timothy
  Author: Bayard, Louis
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060534214 Date: 2003
  PW
  In this absorbing mystery set in 1860 London, a grown-up Timothy Cratchit discovers the dead body of ten-year-old girl.
  Updated 9.22.03
• Under the Skin
  Author: Blake, James Carlos
  Publisher: Morrow $ 25.95 ISBN: 0380977516 Date: 2003
  Library Journal
  Blake's latest tough-skinned novel is a 1930s crime saga with roots on both sides of the Rio Grande. Under the Skin is the tale of Jimmy Youngblood, bodyguard to gangster brothers. As the story ranges from steamy Galveston to the brutal Mexican desert, Jimmy's life takes its most fearsome turn yet when he fails for the wife of a powerful and vengeful Mexican warlord.
  Updated 1.16.03
• Islands of Silence
  Author: Booth, Martin
  Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312268041 Date: 2003
  Kirkus
  From the author of the Booker shortlisted Industry of Souls comes a gripping novel of a World War I veteran who shuts himself off from the world.
  Updated 10.31.02
• Eye of the Abyss
  Author: Browne, Marshall
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312311567 Date: 2003
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  The author of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize-nominated mystery, The Wooden Leg of Inspector Anders, now delivers an atmospheric and powerful thriller set during the rise of the Nazi party.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars | World War Stars
  Updated 9.22.03
• Train
  Author: Dexter, Pete
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 26 ISBN: 0385505914 Date: 2003
  PW
  National Book Award-winner Dexter crafts a stunning novel of crime, race, and unlikely liaisons in this tautly written Los Angeles noir set in the 1950s that brings to mind Chinatown and L.A. Confidential.
  Updated 7.8.03
• Gates of Hell: A Mystery of Alexander the Great
  Author: Doherty, Paul
  Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 24 ISBN: 0786711574 Date: 2003
  PW
  Spurred by dreams of conquest but dogged by treachery, the volatile young Alexander has set his ambitious eyes on the prize city of Halicarnassus in this new novel by Doherty.
  Updated 7.28.03
• Die Laughing: Daisy Dalrymple
  Author: Dunn, Carola
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312309139 Date: 2003
  Kirkus
  It's the Roaring Twenties, and Daisy discovers her dentist stone-cold dead when she goes for her appointment. Once again, it falls to the Honourable Miss Dalrymple Fletcher to uncover the truth behind this murder most foul.
  Updated 7.28.03
• Alms for Oblivion
  Author: Gooden, Philip
  Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 24 ISBN: 07786711426 Date: 2003
  Booklist
  An actor is dead, and the cast of suspects grows, but the finger of the coroner is pointing at amateur detective Nick Revill. With as many twists to its plot as a Shakespearean play and betrayals compounded as often as in Troilus and Cressida, Gooden offers, as Library Journal notes, "authentic settings and a solid and intriguing plot Ythat? result in a fine historical mystery."
  Updated 5.14.03
• Pompeii
  Author: Harris, Robert
  Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 0679428895 Date: 2003
  Kirkus Booklist
  Ancient Rome is the setting for the superb new novel from Robert Harris, author of the number one bestsellers Fatherland, Enigma and Archangel. - Publisher Marketing.
  Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens
  Updated 10.23.03
• Letter From Home
  Author: Hart, Carolyn
  Publisher: Prime Crime $ 22.95 ISBN: 0425191796 Date: 2003
  PW
  In the summer of 1944, Gretchen Gilman was working as a reporter at the local newspaper. Her assignments weren't very exciting--until Faye Tatum was found dead in her own living room.
  Updated 9.08.03
• Havana: An Earl Swagger Novel
  Author: Hunter, Stephen
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 25 ISBN: 0743238087 Date: 2003
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  It is 1953 and Cuba is at its lush, tropical, and glamorous best. Only one small problem threatens this situation--the rise of a daring revolutionary named Fidel Castro. Now, legendary sniper Earl Swagger has been called in by the CIA to take him out.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars
  Updated 8.13.03
• Dead Man Riding: Nell Bray
  Author: Linscott, Gillian
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312308248 Date: 2003
  PW
  Updated 12.23.02
• The Coffee Trader
  Author: Liss, David
  Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375508546 Date: 2003
  PW
  With wit, imagination, and mystery, Liss depicts a world of subterfuge, danger, and repressed longing, where religious and cultural traditions clash with the demands of a new and exciting way of doing business. Readers of historical suspense and lovers of coffee will be up all night with this intriguing novel.
  Updated 1.28.03
• Six Easy Pieces: Easy Rawlins Stories
  Author: Mosley, Walter
  Publisher: Atria $ 24 ISBN: 0743442520 Date: 2003
  Library Journal
  Suggested Reading: African American Stars
  Updated 1.16.03
• Belshazzar's Daughter: A Mystery of Istanbul
  Author: Nadel, Barbara
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312316534 Date: 2003
  PW Booklist
  When a brutal murder shocks Istanbul's Jewish quarter, the Turkish police force unleashes its best weapon, the highly eccentric Inspector Cetin Ikmen.
  Updated 1.6.04
• Silver Lies
  Author: Parker, Ann
  Publisher: Poisoned Pen $ 24.95 ISBN: 1590580729 Date: 2003
  PW
  As 1879 draws to a close, this Rocky Mountain boomtown has infected the world with silver fever. It's not much different than the dot.com mania or the corporate scams that heat up over a century later. Unfortunately for Joe Rose, a precious-metals assayer, death stakes its own claim. Joe's body is found trampled into the muck behind Inez Stannert's saloon. Inez already had much more to deal with than pouring shots of Taos Lightning and cleaning up a corpse. A lady educated on the East Coast, she has a past that doesn't bear close scrutiny, including her elopement with a gambling man who has recently disappeared. Most townsfolk, including Inez's business partner, Abe Jackson, dismiss Joe's death as an accident. Death, after all, is no stranger in Leadville. But Inez wonders: Why was this loving husband and father carrying a brass token good for "one free screw" at the parlor house of Denver madam Mattie Silks? When Joe's widow Emma asks Inez to settle Joe's affairs, almost against her will, Inez uncovers skewed assays, bogus greenbacks, and blackmail. Lies and secrets run deep in Colorado, secrets more likely to lead to a hanging than to today's congressional hearings or country-club prisons for the crooked and the greedy. Then again, maybe Joe's murder was purely personal.... - Publisher Marketing
  Updated 8.18.03
• The Hell Screen: A Mystery of Ancient Japan
  Author: Parker, I.J.
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 031228795x Date: 2003
  PW
  Rich, textured, and historically researched, this complex mystery of ancient Japan is the second in an acclaimed series featuring Akitada Sugawara.
  Updated 7.21.03
• The Dante Club
  Author: Pearl, Matthew
  Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375505296 Date: 2003
  Kirkus Booklist
  When a series of gruesome murders erupts in 1865, only Boston's literary elite realize that the style and form of the killings are derived from Dante's Inferno. Twenty-six-year-old Pearl brilliantly blends fact and fiction in this debut mystery starring Oliver Wendell Holmes and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
  Suggested Reading: First Fiction & Mystery Debuts
  Updated 12.02.02
• No Graves as Yet
  Author: Perry, Anne
  Publisher: Ballantine $ 25.95 ISBN: 0345456521 Date: 2003
  PW
  The New York Times bestselling author and master of historical suspense offers the first in a five-volume series set during World War I.
  Suggested Reading: World War Stars
  Updated 7.1.03
• Four for a Boy: A John the Eunuch Mystery
  Author: Reed, Mary & Eric Mayer
  Publisher: Poisoned Pen $ 24.95 ISBN: 1590580311 Date: 2003
  PW Booklist
  John the Eunuch, on his first assignment, investigates a murder involving the imperial heir... Travel back in time from 540 AD to the winter of 525. In Constantinople's Great Church, a crowd has gathered around a recently donated statute of Christ. Suddenly a riot erupts. Three Blues, members of the racing faction favored by heir-to-the-throne Justinian and his intended bride, Theodora, flee. At the base of the marble Christ a wealthy philanthropist lies dead. John, a slave accompanying his pupil, Lady Anna, witnesses the scene and her grief. The dead man was a friend of Anna's father, Senator Opimius. Later that day John is arrested for brawling among his fellow eunuch and thrown into the dungeons. He expects to be executed. Instead, he is led into the presence of the gravely ill Justinian and given a mystifying commission - together with the excubitor, Felix, John is to discover whether the murder was staged in order to discredit the imperial heir. In a city where no one can be trusted, John begins to piece together a mosaic of murder, and in doing so takes the first steps along the path that will lead him to high office. Booklist, in a starred review for Three for a Letter, following its starred review for Two for Joy, says it ..".continues the authors' record of creating near-perfect historical mysteries. These novels are charming mixtures of humor, intrigue, and period detail." See where it all began... - Publisher Marketing.
  Updated 3.13.03
• Last Citadel: A Novel of the Battle of Kursk
  Author: Robbins, David L.
  Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell $ 24.95 ISBN: 0553801775 Date: 2003
  LJ
  A remarkable, passionate tale of espionage, deceit, and unprecedented valor, the tension builds to an unbearable degree as each soldier waits for the sun to rise on July 5, 1943, the day that will change history--and their lives--forever.
  Suggested Reading: World War Stars
  Updated 8.14.03
• Hollow Crown: Lord Edward Corinth and Verity Brown
  Author: Roberts, David
  Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 24 ISBN: 0786710527 Date: 2003
  PW
  Updated 12.16.02
• Point of Honour
  Author: Robins, Madeleine E.
  Publisher: Forge $ 24.95 ISBN: 031287202x Date: 2003
  Booklist LJ
  In the first title of a brand-new series, danger, intrigue, and romance are rampant on the mean streets of Regency London, where Sarah Tolerance, the "fallen" daughter of a noble, has invented a new role for herself: Agent of Inquiry.
  Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens
  Updated 5.29.03
• King Bongo: A Novel of Havana
  Author: Sanchez, Thomas
  Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 0679406964 Date: 2003
  Booklist
  The author of the epic Key West novel Mile Zero, returns to the tropics with King Bongo--a stunning story of desire and political danger set against the glamour, intrigue, and corruption of 1950s Havana.
  Updated 3.31.03
• Maisie Dobbs
  Author: Winspear, Jacqueline
  Publisher: Soho $ 24 ISBN: 1569473307 Date: 2003
  Library Journal PW
  "Meet Maisie Dobbs, who in 1929 launches her career as a private investigator and finds herself drawn back to the Great War she thought she'd long since put behind her: an unexpected beginning for Maisie--and a rare treat for mystery fans."--Charles Todd, A Fearsome Doubt.
  Suggested Reading: World War Stars | Debuts | Adult Books for Teens
  Updated 6.19.03