Surprising Detectives
'Biography is one of the new terrors of death', said by John Arbuthnot, the Scottish satirist, physician, and friend of Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope.
But we think we can add another new terror, that of being made to exercise your little grey cells and solve a crime. It seems nowadays no one - dead or alive, famous or fictional, human or animal (see sheep below), queen or president - isn't forced to turn their hand to solve a spot of murder.
Inspired by reading Laurence Binet's clever novel Perspectives, we've been compiling a list of unusual detectives.
Giorgio Vasari
Laurence Binet
Perspectives
Hardback, £18.99
Translated from the French by Sam Taylor
Florence, New Year’s Day 1557. As dawn breaks, a painter is discovered lying on the floor of a church, stabbed through the heart.
Giorgio Vasari, the great Renaissance art historian, author of Lives of the Artists and friend of Michelangelo, is tasked by Cosimo de Medici with finding the murderer.
A dazzling novel of art, politics and murder told in letters.
Binet is the author of the international bestseller HHhH.
A Flock of Sheep
Leonie Swann
Three Bags Full
Paperback, £8.99
On a hillside near the quaint Irish village of Glennkill, the flock gathers around the dead body of their shepherd, George, who lies pinned to the ground with a spade. George cared deeply for the sheep, reading to them daily, and as a result they are far smarter than your average flock.
Led by Miss Maple, the sharpest sheep in Glennkill (and possibly the world), they set out to find George's killer.
Translated from the German by the incomparable Anthea Bell.
You will love these sheep.
C. S. Lewis
Maureen Paton
The Mystery at Rake Hall: C. S. Lewis Investigates
Hardback, £16.99
In post-war Oxford, secrets lie behind every door.
In 1947, with rationing still biting and the black market thriving, university don C.S. ‘Jack’ Lewis finds himself pulled into a mystery straight from one of his friend Dorothy Sayers’ novels.
Described in one review as 'satisfyingly violent'. 'Sprightly and elegantly written' (The Daily Telegraph).
Queen Elizabeth II
S. J. Bennett
The Windsor Knot
Paperback, £9.99
The morning after a dinner party at Windsor Castle, eighty-nine-year-old Queen Elizabeth is shocked to discover that one of her guests has been found murdered in his room, with a rope around his neck. When the police begin to suspect her loyal servants, Her Majesty knows they are looking in the wrong place.
For the Queen has been living an extraordinary double life ever since her coronation. Away from the public eye, she has a brilliant knack for solving crimes.
For fans of The Thursday Murder Club.
Miss Georgiana Darcy
Amelia Blackwell
A Crime Through Time
Hardback, £18.99
Crime, time travel and Jane Austen collide. Pemberley, 1799. When Miss Georgiana Darcy attempts to escape an unwanted marriage proposal, she isn’t expecting to end up quite so far from home.
But after encountering a mysterious object in the nearby woods, she finds herself transported almost two hundred years into the future.
Saltram, 1995. At a grand country house where a film crew are busy shooting the latest Jane Austen adaptation, a terrible crime has been committed.
Jane Austen
Jessica Bull
Miss Austen Investigates
Paperback, £9.99
Jane Austen and her characters are kept busy solving crimes -- amazing she had any time to write novels.
In this one, when the body of a milliner is shockingly discovered during a lavish ball at Sir John Harcourt’s estate, Jane must turn her powers of observation to detection to unmask the true murderer.
Jane Austen (again -- this time for children)
Julia Golding
The Abbey Mystery (Jane Austen Investigates)
Paperback, £8.99
Well-known children's writer Julia Golding has written a series of mysteries with Jane as the investigator.
Each one is inspired by an Austen novel. Other titles in the series include: The Burglar's Ball (Sense and Sensibility), The Convict's Canal (Pride and Prejudice), and this one, which is based on Northanger Abbey.
Josephine Tey
Nicola Upson
An Expert in Murder
Paperback, £9.99
This is the first in Nicola's excellent and popular series that features Golden Age crime writer Josephine Tey as its lead character, set in the world of 1930s theatre which formed the other half of her writing life.
It's March 1934, and Tey is travelling from Scotland to London to celebrate what should be the triumphant final week of her celebrated play, Richard of Bordeaux. However, a seemingly senseless murder puts her reputation, and even her life, under threat.
An Expert in Murder is both a tribute to one of the most enduringly popular writers of crime and an atmospheric detective novel in its own right.
The Mitford Sisters
Jessica Fellowes
The Mitford Murders: Nancy Mitford and the Murder of Florence Nightingale Shore
Paperback, £9.99
Written by the niece of Julian Fellowes and author of the book of Downton Abbey, Jessica's whodunnit set in the glamorous world of the Mitfords in 1919. 'Lively, well-written [and] entertaining' (The Times).
There are six in the series, each featuring a different Mitford sister as a detective.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Julian Barnes
Arthur and George
Paperback, £10.99
This is a bit different in that it based on true events, The Great Wyrley Outrages. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is grief-stricken after the death of his wife. Amidst all his problems, he decides to take up the case of George Edalji, a Parsee lawyer, imprisoned for writing obscene letters.
Henry Fielding
Laura Shepherd Robinson
The Art of a LIe
Hardback, £18.99
A gripping, twisty tale set in eighteenth-century London.
London, 1749. Hannah Cole's world shatters following her husband’s brutal murder. Her confectionery shop, the Punchbowl and Pineapple, teeters on the brink of ruin.
Just as she uncovers a hidden fortune—money her husband secretly possessed—a new nightmare begins. Magistrate Henry Fielding, the renowned author, suspects illicit gains. To save her inheritance, her shop, and her very reputation, Hannah must delve into her late husband's secret life.
Note: not all detectives are successful.
Oscar Wilde
Gyles Brandreth
The Candlelight Murders
Paperback, £9.99
This is the first in Gyles' atmospheric Victorian Murder Mystery Series.
London, 1889: Famous writer Oscar Wilde is the toast of London town. But when the body of a young man of his acquaintance is found in a dark attic room, surrounded by candles, he knows he can't rest until the killer is behind bars. Appealing to fellow author Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the great Sherlock Holmes, the pair set out to solve the crime.
Agatha Christie
Andrew Wilson
A Talent for Murder
Paperback, £10.99
Agatha Christie, in London to visit her literary agent, boards a train, preoccupied and flustered in the knowledge that her husband Archie is having an affair. She feels a light touch on her back, causing her to lose her balance, then a sense of someone pulling her to safety from the rush of the incoming train.
So begins a terrifying sequence of events. Her rescuer is no guardian angel; rather, he is a blackmailer of the most insidious, manipulative kind. Agatha must use every ounce of her cleverness and resourcefulness to thwart an adversary determined to exploit her genius for murder to kill on his behalf.
Anthony Horowitz
Anthony Horowitz
The Word is Murder
Paperback, £9.99
Ingeniously Anthony Horowitz himself stars in this fiendishly clever Hawthorne murder mystery series.
A woman is strangled six hours after organising her own funeral.
Did she know she was going to die? Did she recognise her killer?
Enter Daniel Hawthorne, a detective with a genius for solving crimes and an ability to hold secrets very close. With him is his writing partner, Anthony Horowitz. Together they will set out to solve his most puzzling of mysteries.
Giordano Bruno
S. J. Parris
Heresy
Paperback, £9.99
Oxford, 1583. Set at the time of Queen Elizabeth I In Elizabeth’s England, true faith can mean bloody murder.
The country is rife with plots to assassinate Queen Elizabeth and return the realm to the Catholic faith. philosopher Giordano Bruno is recruited by the queen’s spymaster and sent undercover to expose a treacherous conspiracy in Oxford – but his own secret mission must remain hidden at all costs.
When a series of hideous murders ruptures close-knit college life, Bruno is compelled to investigate. There are now several titles in this bestselling series.
Theodore Roosevelt
Caleb Carr
The Alienist
Paperback, £10.99
Theodore Roosevelt's career included serving as a New York assemblyman, police commissioner, assistant secretary of the navy, and governor of New York, before eventually becoming 26th President of the United States.
New York City, 1896. The story follows Police Commissioner Roosevelt and psychiatrist Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, as they attempt to solve gruesome murders through new methods including fingerprinting and psychology.
Sigmund Freud
Frank Tallis
Vienna Blood
Paperback, £10.99
The six books were filmed as the popular Vienna Blood series on TV.
Vienna, 1902. Philosophy, science and art are flourishing. Coffee shops are full of the latest cultural and political theories. A beautiful young medium is murdered in what seems at first to be supernatural circumstances.
We are stretching our criteria here because the investigator is actually a pupil of Freud, Dr Max Liebermann, a young psychoanalyst.
Flavia de Luce - Ten-Year-Old Girl
Alan Bradley
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
Paperback, £10.99
England 1950. At Buckshaw, the crumbling country seat of the de Luce family, very-nearly-eleven-year-old Flavia is plotting revenge on her older sisters. Then a dead bird is left on the doorstep, which has an extraordinary effect on Flavia's eccentric father, and a body is found in the garden.
As the police descend on Buckshaw, Flavia decides to do some investigating of her own.
A cross between I Capture the Castle and the Addams Family.
The Bronte Sisters
Bella Ellis
The Vanished Bride
Paperback, £9.99
Yorkshire, 1845, and dark rumours are spreading across the moors. Everything indicates that Mrs Elizabeth Chester of Chester Grange has been brutally murdered in her home - but nobody can find her body.
As the dark murmurs reach Emily, Anne and Charlotte Brontë, the sisters are horrified, yet intrigued.
We have only included ones that are currently available, but there are others which sound intriguing: Macchiavelli in The Malice of Fortune by Michael Ennis and Groucho Marx in King of the Jungle by Ron Goulart,