Book Review – History and Mystery Reads

One Corpse Too Many (1979), Ellis Peters

Rating: 7/10 Accuracy: Based on the real siege of Shrewsbury in 1138 by King Stephen during…

Rating: 6/10 Accuracy: Good on Victorian domestic life and the gulf between classes, though the dialogue…

Rating: 8/10 Accuracy: Superb on the Victorian photography trade, capital punishment and Madame Tussaud’s. Plot: A…

Rating: 7/10 Accuracy: Strong on Victorian middle-class family life, law and the social importance of respectability.…

Rating: 8/10 Accuracy: Well grounded in twelfth-century England and Wales, from monastic life to Welsh law…

Rating: 7/10 Accuracy: Knowledgeable on Egyptology and on Egypt in the 1880s; the author was a…

Rating: 7/10 Accuracy: Solid on the Vienna of Freud and on Victorian drug culture, though the…

Rating: 5/10 Accuracy: Pleasant period detail on 1869 London and on Wilkie Collins, but the history…

Rating: 7/10 Accuracy: Excellent on the Victorian craze for pedestrianism, the six-day walking races that drew…

Rating: 7/10 · Translated from Spanish Accuracy: Based on real nineteenth-century attempts to beatify Columbus and…

Rating: 7/10 Accuracy: Rich on British India and Afghanistan in the 1850s–70s, culminating in the real…

Rating: 7/10 · Translated from French; English edition 2014 Accuracy: Deeply researched on sixteenth-century France, the…