Five of the best historical crime novelists

J. Kingston Pierce is both the editor of the award-winning crime-fiction blog The Rap Sheet and the senior editor of January Magazine.

For his column as Kirkus Reviews’ lead blogger in the Mysteries and Thrillers category, he came up with five of the best and most interesting historical crime novelists, including:

Michael Gregorio.

Behind that byline hide husband-and-wife authors Daniela De Gregorio and Michael G. Jacob, residents ofcritique Italy who have now penned four historical mysteries featuring early 1800s Prussian magistrate-cum-detective Hanno Stiffeniis. It’s best to begin reading at the start of this series, with Critique of Criminal Reason (2006), in which Stiffeniis must determine who’s responsible for doing in four people, none of whom shows obvious signs of violence. Fortunately, Stiffeniis has help from his aging mentor, German philosopher Emmanuel Kant, who uses these slayings to test his hypotheses about criminal-probing methodologies.

Read about the other novelists on the list.

My Book, The Movie: Michael Gregorio's Hanno Stiffeniis novels.

Also see: David B. Rivkin, Jr's five best historical mystery novels and Randy Dotinga's top five historical true-crime books of the last decade.

--Marshal Zeringue