Historical Mysteries

Abstract

One of the more remarkable developments in crime writing since 1980 has been the veritable explosion of crime fiction placed in a historical setting. Of course, earlier decades too knew this particular subgenre. In the UK, for instance, during the 1970s Peter Lovesey ran a series set in the late 1800s. In the 1990s he returned to this period with as his detective the then future King Edward VII, affectionally nicknamed ‘Bertie’. Also during the 1970s, but less famous than Lovesey, Derek Lambert, writing under the pseudonym Richard Falkirk, created Bow Street runner Edmund ‘Beau’ Blackstone, hero of a series set in early nineteenth-century London. Turning to exotic as well as historic settings, from the late 1950s on and throughout the 1960s, Robert van Gulik, a Dutch diplomat writing in English, published his Judge Dee mysteries, set in seventh-century China.