20 Of The Best Historical Mystery Books, Or They Don’t ALL Have to Be Set In Regency England?

History and mystery are two words that rhyme fields that go easily hand in hand. As the saying goes, when two historians discuss the same event, often you’ll end up with three different perspectives. I suppose the same can be said of many different fields, but I think it is especially true for history because there are so many ways to interpret decisions and events. Since none of us were there, and often there is only a limited number of corroborating documents to support a point of view, we have to resort to speculation. Which is fun. And it’s fertile soil for authors who then give us many, many delightful historical mystery books.

I don’t really know that mystery as a genre requires any definition. I do, however, want to make a note about what defines historical fiction. According to the Historical Novel Society, historical fiction can be any work set more than 50 years ago, or which was written by someone who wasn’t alive during the events described, which would require the author to rely on research to describe it. Alternate history, pseudo-history, timeslip, historical fantasy, and multiple timeline novels all count as historical fiction as well. Of course, there is really no one easy way to define the entire genre of historical fiction. I personally prefer to think of historical fiction as being set before 1960, even though I wasn’t alive until the late 1970s. Post-1960 events just seem too recent to write about in terms of “historical fiction.” I call that literary fiction or contemporary fiction. That’s just me, though. You can define it however you want.