The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction

INTRODUCTION Return to the Crime Scene

The stories in this anthology cover over four thousand years of crime. We travel from the Bronze Age of 2300 BC to the eve of the Second World War, passing through ancient Greece and Rome, the Byzantine Empire, medieval Venice and seventh-century Ireland, before heading for Britain and the United States.

All except one of these stories are brand new, written especially for this anthology. This is my fifteenth anthology of historical crime and mystery fiction (for those interested there is a full list on the ‘Also in the series’ page), and this time I wanted to feature longer stories. This allows the author to concentrate on the historical setting, character and mindset of the period, so that not only do these stories present fascinating crimes and puzzles, but you also get to know the people and their world in more detail. There are twelve stories in this volume compared to the usual twenty or twenty-five; they are almost like mini-novels, allowing a greater understanding of the time.

I’ve also broadened the coverage. Rather than focus solely on a mystery and its solution, here we have a broader range of crimes and a wider variety of those trying to solve them. Hence you will find, among others, a young girl in Bronze Age Britain trying to understand whether a series of deaths over a period of time were accidental or deliberate; an icon-painter in ancient Byzantium, suddenly out of work when all icons are banned, who becomes embroiled in a case of deception; a priest-finder trying to track down attempted regicides; Charles Babbage and the young Ada Byron trying to crack a coded message and stop a master criminal; and New York detectives on the lookout for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Your guides are twelve of the leading writers in historical crime fiction who are about to bring the past alive. Let us return to the scene of the crime.

— Mike Ashley