What is historical crime fiction

 "After writing some thirty books or more I find writing historical mysteries to be the greatest challenge of all, especially those set in the early medieval period, such as my John Crowner series." Bernard Knight.

Most periods of history have been tackled at one time or another by the scores of historical crime writers out there - From ancient Rome in the entertaining Lindsey Davies novels, to ancient Greece in the works of Margaret Doody. There are crime novels set during the American Civil War and some set in prehistoric times. Roman Britain has been explored in the works of Rosemary Row and the streets of Victorian London brought to life by countless writers.

Perhaps the best known of all historical crime writers is the late Ellis Peters with her hugely entertaining Cadfael series. The character of Cadfael himself is a Welsh Benedictine monk living at Shrewsbury Abbey, in western England, in the first half of the 12th century. The historically accurate stories are set between about 1135 and about 1145, during "The Anarchy", the destructive contest for the crown of England between King Stephen and Empress Maud.

Historical Crime  is a sub-genre of historical fiction which bears elements of the classical mystery novel, in which the central plot involves a crime (almost always a murder) and the setting has some historical significance. One of the big areas of debate within the community of fans is what makes a given setting historical. Most (but not all) agree that it should involve a time before the book was published. But how much before? 25 years? 50 years? 100 years? All have their proponents. Others think the setting should be X number of years before the author's lifetime, or before the readers' lifetime. There's also a lot of debate over how much historical accuracy is required to make a given setting historical rather than fantasy or alternate history or really just a modern story in fancy dress. While there has to be some elements of real life history to the setting under most definitions, the "detective" may be a real-life historical figure, eg. Socrates, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Mozart, or a wholly imaginary character.


"Writing historical fiction is a lot of fun. The research involved in producing medieval mysteries is exciting and absorbing and it seems that however much I do there is always more to learn." Susanna Gregory

I myself have dipped my toes into the historical fiction pond - My novel, Down Among the Dead is set during World War Two and I intend to continue this series just as soon as time allows. The book is on a special FREE promotion at Amazon for the next three days....GO CHECK IT OUT



Possibly the first full-length historical whodunnit. was written by Agatha Christie, the Queen of Crime herself when she set Death Comes to an End in ancient Egypt. So what is the appeal of historical crime fiction? Well I'll counter the question with another question, what is the appeal of any genre?

Five highly enjoyable historical mysteries

The Face of a Stranger (Monk series) by Anne Perry

Anne Perry’s much-loved series of novels featuring William Monk explore the richly-described streets and alleys of Victorian London, populated with intriguing and engaging characters. In the first of the series, The Face of a Stranger, William Monk must rediscover his own identity after losing his memory after an accident, at the same as solving a murder in his role as a police detective. This amnesia remains a thread through the following novels, as Monk investigates brutal murders among the elite of London’s glittering, yet deadly, social scene.

The Ashes of London (Marwood and Lovett series) by Andrew Taylor

Set quite literally in the ashes of London following the Great Fire, the first novel in Andrew Taylor’s series introduces readers to James Marwood, who is working, somewhat reluctantly, for Whitehall. As he investigates the discovery of a mutilated body in the ruins of St Paul’s, he meets Cat Lovett, a fugitive with a keen interest in architecture yet constrained by the restrictions of the time on what a woman could do. The geography of London as it rebuilds is key to the novels, with a wealth of period detail against which the intensely thrilling plots unfold. You can almost smell the smoke.

Down Among the Dead by Gary M. Dobbs

It's 1940 - France has fallen, and Britain stands alone against the might of the German war machine; a fierce battle for supremacy of the air rages in the skies as the Battle of Britain hits full stride.

For Chief Inspector Frank Parade and his much-depleted team, there are many challenges to policing the small Welsh mining village of Gilfach Goch, for while miles away from the theatres of war, the home front faces unique challenges of its own. The wartime demands thrown on the country mean that each officer in Parade’s team must do the work of two men - three even.

Soon, the already overwhelming workload is increased when not one, but two bodies turn up, and Parade finds himself having to investigate two murders as well as cope with everything else thrown his way.

The Alienist by Caleb Carr

Caleb Carr’s novel, which promises to be the start of a series, is set in 1890s New York City. In 1919, the narrator, a crime reporter, is reminiscing with Dr Laszlo Kreizler, the ‘alienist’ of the title and early criminal profiler, about working with police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt to solve a number of grisly murders on the Lower East Side. The novel weaves together a diverse cast of characters with recognisable historical figures. The sequel, The Angel of Darkness, features the same team investigating the kidnap of the infant daughter of a visiting Spanish dignitary.

A Gentleman’s Murder by Christopher Huang

Set in 1924, Christopher Huang’s novel offers a locked-room mystery, a cast of upper-class characters, an element of the psychological and more, but also addresses issues of race, addiction and the after-effects of the First World War. Mixed-race protagonist Lieutenant Eric Peterkin joins The Britannia, London’s finest and most prestigious club, but finds himself investigating the mystery of a man found dead in the club’s vault. The mystery takes him well beyond the club to the heroin dens of Limehouse, yet all the clues point towards the officers of the club and of Scotland Yard.

The Welsh Ripper Killings

" Buffalo Bill and Jack the Ripper in Wales around the turn of the twentieth century, kind of catches the imagination doesn't it. Lots of action with intriguing characters, a very good read. I have to admit the ending left me hanging but I understood the logic of it. Read it it and see what you think "   Five Star Amazon Review

The process of producing an eBook is obviously quite different to that of a physical book, but the editing process for The Welsh Ripper Killings has been just as strenuous .  I've written about many aspects of the novel in previous posts and so I thought I'd tell you all a little about Police Inspector Frank Parade's town of Pontypridd.

Parade's beat is the Welsh town of Pontypridd - "Pontypridd was a vibrant cosmopolitan town and had all the attendant problems that went with such prosperity. Alongside the great wealth there existed extreme poverty and the streets were often lawless – river traders, gypsies, pickpockets, drifters, even escaped convicts ranging from petty thieves to crazed killers would come up the canals and make for the alehouses and taverns of which there were plenty. There they would mingle and lose themselves among the sea of faces. Though it had not always been so and the town, once a rural backwater, had been born out of the industrialisation of the surrounding areas and had benefited from its close proximity to the Glamorganshire Canal, which allowed access from Merthyr’s coalfields to the docks in Cardiff and from there the world beyond."

One area of Pontypridd featured heavily in the book is The Tumble - the modern day Tumble is pictured left and the pic above is the same area as it was in Parade's day. Note the trams that ran the length of the town during the days that Frank Parade walked the cobbled streets.

Today the Tumble is made up of a busy main road but sadly the town is no longer the thriving attraction it once was. The main building in the picture is today known as The Soul Suite but in Parade's day it was The White Hart and behind that is the River Taff and the beautiful Ponty Park.

I have tried to remain accurate with Ponty's georgraphy in The Welsh Ripper KIllings although I have taken some artistic licence in the name of telling a story. For instance in the novel the fictional alehouse, The Butcher's Arms is situated opposite the White Hart and it is here that much of the action takes place. The landlord is one Eli Jenkins, a small wiry man who is always on the lookout to make money, legal or otherwise.

"Eventually the Taff Vale railway had linked Pontypridd to the Rhondda creating a fast and efficient artery into the coal scarred hills. Each year would see over 57 million tons of steam coal shipped down from The Black Klondike, as the valleys were

now known. The coal would then be transported down to Cardiff and Barry and once again sent around the world. Fires, the industrialised world over burned bright with Rhondda coal."

The Welsh Ripper Killings is available now from Amazon, Smashwords and anywhere eBooks are sold.

Tonyrefail's Workman's Club: A shoddy way to treat the dead

Working on Dark Valleys, my forthcoming book, I was led to the remains of an old graveyard next to the Workman's Club in Tonyrefail. Next door to the club stood the Ainon Welsh Baptist Chapel and it was here that 22 year old Jane Lewis who was murdered back in 1862 was buried...in fact Jane was the first person to be buried in the chapel which at that time had just been built.

Jane's story, which will be fully covered in Dark Valleys, is a sad and mysterious one - indeed to this day the identity of her killer remains a mystery. And it was her gravestone that brought me to the car park of the Workman's Club - back in 1995 the club purchased the old chapel and graveyard and proceeded to demolish the old building in order to construct a car park for the patrons of the club. Several of the stones were retained from the graveyard and these were placed behind a children's play area next to the car park - Jane's stone remains there set into the ground.

However many of the other stones that remained behind have been vandalised and the entire area is awash  with litter and dog mess. These stones are very old, but nevertheless this seemed to me to be a very shoddy way of treating the dead. It shows a total lack of respect, even recognition, for people who have lived and gone before us.

Thinking this was clearly not right, and not knowing what happened to the remains of the people buried here when the chapel was demolished, I went into the Workman's Club where I was told the council were responsible for the ground next to the car park, which included the children's play area as well as the old graves.

A call to the council found the council disputing ownership and I was given a land registry number for the plot of ground - CYM474273. I then contacted The Welsh Baptist Union and spoke to a lady, Bonnie Davies who tracked down the original sale for me. Yes, she informed me:  'The Ainon Chapel had belonged to the Welsh Baptist Union but on the 20th January 1995 it was sold to the Workman's Club, Tonyrefail. The sale specified the chapel and graveyard, which made the club responsible for the remains buried therein.'

I again visited the club but could not find anyone to speak to that had anything to say, I failed to speak to anyone on the committee of the club. Being a club, the Workman is owned by its members and each night in order to visit the pub these members walk past these shattered and discarded gravestones. I hope they don't get too much dog shit on their shoes.

Thinking that the local newspaper should cover the disgraceful way these old gravestones are being treated, I went to the local press. But as I banged on about the old graves I could sense the reporter on the other end of the line, gazing vacantly at the ceiling. The reporter was no doubt thinking, 'Old graves! Haven't you got anything about living people.Or funny shaped potatoes. Funny shaped potatoes always sell papers. Why we had one that looked like  a cock.'' 

The reporter said he'd  get back to me and I went for a shit, taking a copy of their newspaper with me. And so as I stood there, stained pages of the newspaper swirling into the abyss of the flushing system, I decided to publish this to the internet, in the hope that something is done. For these gravestones may be old, the people they commemorated stricken from memory, but this is a disgrace. It is a disgrace that should be felt by:

Rhondda Cynon Taff Council - for not policing this situation, there is a children's play area next to the car park with only broken gravestones and mounds of dog shit separating one from the other.

The Workman's Club - who may have ultimate responsibility.

The Welsh Baptist Union - for allowing the sale of such a building and graveyard in the first place. People once prayed here, got married here and buried their loved ones here.


The people buried here were promised everlasting remembrance....well, they got it until there was money to be made by the construction of a car park. Then they became a part of the land to be developed.

I'd like to know what happened to the remains buried here when the car park was built? Where were they reburied? Where they exhumed with respect? Or where they simply bulldozed into tiny bone fragments and then used as landfill?


Something needs to be done...this is a stain on Tonyrefail itself.

Like Dark Valleys on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/darkvalleys/

POSTSCRIPT: Since the posting of this article I have been informed that the human remains from the chapel have been buried in a communal grave in Trane cemetary, Tonyrefail. Whatever the feelings about one large plot for all are, then surely the stones should have been removed to the new cemetary and a memorial erected. The Welsh Baptists Union told me, 'this wouldn't happen today but sadly in the 1990's it did.'

Genre Overview - Historical Crime

"After writing some thirty books or more I find writing historical mysteries to be the greatest challenge of all, especially those set in the early medieval period, such as my John Crowner series." Bernard Knight.

Most periods of history have been tackled at one time or another by the scores of historical crime writers out there - From ancient Rome in the entertaining Lindsey Davies novels, to ancient Greece in the works of Margaret Doody. There are crime novels set during the American Civil War and some set in prehistoric times. Roman Britain has been explored in the works of Rosemary Row and the streets of Victorian London brought to life by countless writers.

Perhaps the best known of all historical crime writers is the late Ellis Peters with her hugely entertaining Cadfael series. The character of Cadfael himself is a Welsh Benedictine monk living at Shrewsbury Abbey, in western England, in the first half of the 12th century. The historically accurate stories are set between about 1135 and about 1145, during "The Anarchy", the destructive contest for the crown of England between King Stephen and Empress Maud.

Historical Crime  is a sub-genre of historical fiction which bears elements of the classical mystery novel, in which the central plot involves a crime (almost always a murder) and the setting has some historical significance. One of the big areas of debate within the community of fans is what makes a given setting historical. Most (but not all) agree that it should involve a time before the book was published. But how much before? 25 years? 50 years? 100 years? All have their proponents. Others think the setting should be X number of years before the author's lifetime, or before the readers' lifetime. There's also a lot of debate over how much historical accuracy is required to make a given setting historical rather than fantasy or alternate history or really just a modern story in fancy dress. While there has to be some elements of real life history to the setting under most definitions, the "detective" may be a real-life historical figure, eg. Socrates, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens,Mozart, or a wholly imaginary character.

"Writing historical fiction is a lot of fun. The research involved in producing medieval mysteries is exciting and absorbing and it seems that however much I do there is always more to learn." Susanna Gregory

I myself have dipped my toes into the historical fiction pond - my novel A Policeman's Lot is set in the year 1904 in South Wales and features such historical figures as Buffalo Bill Cody and Jack the Ripper. How does that come about? Well read the book and find out but I will say that my answer to the Ripper murders is credible and has never been done before. I'm proud of that...and you know I may just be right. It's certainly an answer that comes out of left field but I won't give it away here - check out the book and discover for yourself.



Possibly the first full-length historical whodunnit. was written by Agatha Christie, the Queen of Crime herself when she set Death Comes to an End in ancient Egypt. So what is the appeal of historical crime fiction? Well I'll counter the question with another question, what is the appeal of any genre?

The Welsh Ripper Killings

The process of producing an eBook is obviously quite different to that of a physical book, but the editing process for The Welsh Ripper Killings has been just as strenuous - however the book will finally see ePrint later this week. I've written about many aspects of the novel in previous posts and so I thought I'd tell you all a little about Police Inspector Frank Parade's town of Pontypridd.

Parade's beat is the Welsh town of Pontypridd - "Pontypridd was a vibrant cosmopolitan town and had all the attendant problems that went with such prosperity. Alongside the great wealth there existed extreme poverty and the streets were often lawless – river traders, gypsies, pickpockets, drifters, even escaped convicts ranging from petty thieves to crazed killers would come up the canals and make for the alehouses and taverns of which there were plenty. There they would mingle and lose themselves among the sea of faces. Though it had not always been so and the town, once a rural backwater, had been born out of the industrialisation of the surrounding areas and had benefited from its close proximity to the Glamorganshire Canal, which allowed access from Merthyr’s coalfields to the docks in Cardiff and from there the world beyond."

One area of Pontypridd featured heavily in the book is The Tumble - the modern day Tumble is pictured left and the pic above is the same area as it was in Parade's day. Note the trams that ran the length of the town during the days that Frank Parade walked the cobbled streets.

Today the Tumble is made up of a busy main road but sadly the town is no longer the thriving attraction it once was. The main building in the picture is today known as The Soul Suite but in Parade's day it was The White Hart and behind that is the River Taff and the beautiful Ponty Park.

I have tried to remain accurate with Ponty's georgraphy in A Policeman's Lot although I have taken some artistic licence in the name of telling a story. For instance in the novel the fictional alehouse, The Butcher's Arms is situated opposite the White Hart and it is here that much of the action takes place. The landlord is one Eli Jenkins, a small wiry man who is always on the lookout to make money, legal or otherwise.

"Eventually the Taff Vale railway had linked Pontypridd to the Rhondda creating a fast and efficient artery into the coal scarred hills. Each year would see over 57 million tons of steam coal shipped down from The Black Klondike, as the valleys were

now known. The coal would then be transported down to Cardiff and Barry and once again sent around the world. Fires, the industrialised world over burned bright with Rhondda coal."

The Welsh Ripper Killings is available now from Amazon, Smashwords and anywhere eBooks are sold.

The Sanctuary Seeker by Bernard Knight

Bernard Knight has been writing since 1963 and he is now the third longest serving member of The Crime Writer's Association. During the 1960's he published with Robert Hale LTD but it wasn't until 1998 that he stumbled upon the character for which he is now best known.

The character was Crowner John, a 12th century knight and crusader, who was appointed as the first coroner of Devon in 1194.


"The series was born of Bernard Knight's professional interest in the history of the coroner system, under which he worked as a forensic pathologist for so many years, combined with his fascination for the12th century, folowing the writing of two 'straight' novels about that period in Wales.
Crowner John is a complex character, on the one hand a bluff professional soldier, hardened by two decades of fighting from Ireland to the Holy Land - yet he is a passionate man, often involved in amorous intrigues. Married against both their inclinations to Matilda, sister of Sir Richard de Revelle, the crooked sheriff of Devonshire, he had spent twenty years trying to avoid her by staying away to fight, accompanied by his trusty Cornish henchman, Gwyn of Polruan.
His long-tern mistress is Nesta, landlady of the The Bush tavern in Exeter, but he also has a yearning for his former sweetheart Hilda of Dawlish, a beautiful blonde Saxon.
The other permanent member of the cast is Thomas de Peyne, an unfrocked priest, who acts as his clerk. Small, stooped and lame, his unprepossessing appearance is relieved by an astute brain and wide knowledge of almost everything.
Many of the characters actually existed in history and usually held the positions described in the stories. Only de Wolfe is fictional, as history does not record the Devon coroners until the 13th century.
All the other names are authentic for the period, being taken from the court rolls of Devon. "

Crowner John is called to hold an inquest on a rotted body found besides a stream near to the village of Widecombe. The local sheriff quickly arrests a man but Crowner John is sure that he has got the wrong man and then the dead man is identified as a crusader and a member of one of Devon's wealthiest and most respectable families. The investigation is hampered at every turn by Crowner Joh's own bother in law, Sheriff Richard De Revelle.

The problem with historical crimes is that so much period detail is needed that it can impede on a good story but the author understand this and first and foremost this is an entertaining crime story. That's not to say the history is not present - it is, the author is after all an expert on the period.

This is the first of the series I've read but I will definately be seeking out more - in fact I've got the next six titles in the series in my TBR pile.