Historical Mysteries

Mary Jo Adamson
§ The Blazing Tree 		Rennie Airth
§ The Blood-Dimmed Tide 		Tasha Alexander
§ And Only to Deceive 		Suzanne Arruda
§ Stalking Ivory
Cordelia Frances Biddle
§ The Conjurer
§ Deception's Daughter 		Rhys Bowen
§ For the Love of Mike
§ Her Royal Spyness
§ In Dublin's Fair City
§ Murphy’s Law
§ Oh Danny Boy
§ A Royal Pain 		Barbara Cleverly
§ The Damascened Blade
§ The Last Kashmiri Rose
§ The Palace Tiger
§ The Tomb of Zeus 		Jeanne M. Dams
§ Crimson Snow
§ Silence is Golden
Kathy Lynn Emerson
§ Face Down Below the Banqueting House 		Margaret Frazer
§ The Bastard’s Tale
§ The Hunter’s Tale
§ The Traitor's Tale
§ The Widow’s Tale 		Alan Gordon
§ The Widow of Jerusalem 		Ann Granger
§ The Companion
Kathryn Miller Haines
§ The War Against Miss Winter 		Barbara Hambly
§ Wet Grave 		C.S. Harris
§ What Angels Fear 		Craig Holden
§ The Jazz Bird
Margit Liesche
§ Lipstick and Lies 		Paul L. Moorcraft
§ Anchoress of Shere 		Sharan Newman
§ Heresy
§ The Shanghai Tunnel
§ The Witch in the Well 		Candace Robb
§ The Cross-Legged Knight
P.B. Ryan
§ Murder in a Mill Town
§ Still Life With Murder 		Tom Rob Smith
§ Child 44 		Daniel Stashower
§ The Beautiful Cigar Girl:
Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe and The Invention of Murder 		Kate Summerscale
§ The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher:
A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective
Andrew Taylor
§ An Unpardonable Crime 		Jacqueline Winspear
§ Birds of a Feather
§ An Incomplete Revenge
§ Maisie Dobbs


Face Down Below the Banqueting House, Kathy Lynn Emerson, Perseverance Press, $13.95.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book - I had never read Kathy Lynn Emerson before, and had been put off (I think) because I had read Karen Harper's books, which feature Queen Elizabeth I as the narrator. That just seemed so wrong to me, that it was a lovely surprise to find Queen Elizabeth I present in Emerson's book, but only tangentially. We as readers only get a good "look" at her in one (very memorable) scene. This book centers, instead (as all the Emerson novels do) on Susanna, Lady Appleton, a skillful herbalist and widow. The Queen comes into the story because she is considering staying at Lady Appleton's house during her summer progress, and the house, Leigh Abbey, is the largest in the surrounding neighborhood. Lady Appleton, not a fan of court life, is dismayed by the possibility of being booted out of her own house so the Queen can move in, furniture, bathtub, snotty courtiers and all, for a few days. The preparations even include building a special type of treehouse - suitable for a court banquet - in her back yard.

The story also centers around Lady Appleton's maid, Jennet, who in an opening prologue, meets not only one of the villains of the piece, Master Tymberly, but Lord Robert Dudley and the Queen herself. Much as the film Shakespeare in Love was so adept at conveying the kind of wonder and delight playgoers must have felt when seeing a brand new play by William Shakespeare, Emerson is equally adept at conveying the kind of intimidated awe and wonder an ordinary person in the 16th century might have felt were they to actually encounter Queen Elizabeth. For any fan of Elizabethan England, this is a true delight.

The other great strength of the book - alongside a clever plot that finds two men killed in mysterious circumstances - is the wealth of detail about daily life at the time. I learned quite a bit but it wasn't force fed to me - it was a natural part of the story. Lady Appleton is also a magnetic central character, and her annoyance at the Queen's intrusion - felt long before her actual presence - is one of the best parts of the book, as is her somewhat unorthodox relationship with a fellow landowner. I was even fooled a bit by the ending. This is a highly recommended read for any history mystery fan, but especially for a fan of Elizabethan England.

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