Created by Gary Corby Why should the Romans get all the fun? Have you consumed all the Gordianus the Finder and Marcus Didius Falco books? Still craving something ancient-y? But you're tired of of all those damn togas? May I suggest Gary Corby's cheeky historical novels about NICOLAOS, “the only private investigator in ancient Greece"? Or, … Continue reading Nicolaos
Tag: Historical
Harry MacNeil
Created by H. Paul Jeffers Pseudonyms include M. T. Jefferson & Harry Paul Lonsdale (1934--) HARRY MacNEIL is a New York P. I. who appeared in three books, all set in the Big Apple in the years leading up to World War II. Rubout at the Onyx (1981) is a private eye story, but by no … Continue reading Harry MacNeil
Horace Dorrington
Created by Arthur Morrison (1863-1945) Arthur Morrison is one of the forgotten crime authors of the Conan Doyle generation. He grew up in genuine poverty, and is remembered by literary critics for his social protest "slum novels", most famously the semi-autobiographical A Child of the Jago. His work also included the intriguingly-titled, but as I … Continue reading Horace Dorrington
Harry Lawton
Created by Matthew Carr It's the summer of 1909, and Caruso-loving London private investigator HARRY LAWTON is hired by the widow of English explorer Randolph Foulkes, the victim of a terrorist bomb that blew him to bits while he was doing the tourist thing, sitting in a Barcelona cafe. It seems the dearly departed left a … Continue reading Harry Lawton
Frank Malloy
Created by Victoria Thompson Although FRANK MALLOY has been a central figure in Victoria Thompson's long-running and bestselling "Gaslight Mystery" series since Book One (1999's Murder on Astor Place), it wasn't until the nineteenth book in the series, Murder in Morningside Heights (2016) that he becomes a "confidential inquirer". That's the book where the former … Continue reading Frank Malloy
Duncan McCallum (Bone Rattler)
Created by Eliot Pattison Possibly taking his cue (maybe) from Robert B. Parker's 1971 doctoral thesis "The Violent Hero, Wilderness Heritage, and Urban Reality: A Study of the Private Eye in the Novels of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald," author Eliot Pattison has recreated James Fenimore Cooper's Hawkeye as DUNCAN McCALLUM, a Colonial-era frontiersman … Continue reading Duncan McCallum (Bone Rattler)
Phil Beaumont & Jane Turner
Created by Walter Satterthwait (1947-2020) Now, here's a truly historic private eye series. PHIL BEAUMONT is an op for the Pinkerton Agency (shades of Hammett!), who often works with attractive rookie detective JANE TURNER. British-born Jane, in fact, partially narrates the stories in a series of chatty, revealing, and amusing letters to an old school chum … Continue reading Phil Beaumont & Jane Turner
Easy Rawlins
Created by Walter Mosley (1952--) “If I knew where I stood then I had a chance of getting where I was going.” -- Cinnamon Kiss In post-WWII Los Angeles, EZEKIEL "EASY" RAWLINS, an unemployed black vet desperate to hang on to his small house, agrees to do a little private snooping for a local gangster, … Continue reading Easy Rawlins
Neil Patrick Rafferty
Created by Josh Lanyon Pseudonym of D.L. Browne "It was always a dame, wasn't it?" That's the opening line in This Rough Magic (2011), a classic bit that wouldn't have been out of place in a Black Mask story 75 years earlier, but of course in Josh Lanyon's books, it's rarely a dame that the … Continue reading Neil Patrick Rafferty
Fred J. Dodge
(1854-1938) Born in Butte County in California in 1854, FRED J. DODGE grew up in Sacramento, and became a detective for Wells Fargo, working for them for over fifty years, much of it undercover, in California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma. There's no doubt Dodge got around. While working in Tombstone, Arizona in 1879, … Continue reading Fred J. Dodge