From Antiques to Alibis: Why We Love Mysteries Steeped in History

Human beings have always been drawn to history’s mysteries. From the final resting place of Cleopatra to the identity of Jack the Ripper, from the Lost Army of Cambyses to the fate of the Amber Room, we want answers. It’s built into our DNA.

(Historical Fiction as a Heist of Its Own.)

Psychologists tell us that cracking codes, solving riddles, resolving conundrums, and uncovering the truth behind history’s most puzzling questions releases dopamine, the “feel good” neurotransmitter. And while we wait for the answers to these real-life enigmas, we indulge our captivation with history’s mysteries by reading historical crime fiction—excellent news for those of us who write it.

The mystery novel was born in the 19th century and grew up during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, usually described as the period between the two world wars. Conventions of the genre include a puzzle to be solved (usually a murder); a secluded setting, such as a village, a country house, an island; a sleuth (often amateur); a limited cast of suspects; and plenty of clues and red herrings.

Today, hundreds of mysteries are written each year in the tradition and style of the Golden Age. Historical mysteries encompass four related sub-genres:

My own series, the Kate Hamilton Mysteries, falls into the third category. Kate is an American antiques dealer and appraiser who lives and plies her trade in the fictional Suffolk village of Long Barston. The antiques and antiquities Kate handles provide me with a natural way to delve into the past since these precious objects are literal time travelers.

What accounts for the enduring popularity of mysteries steeped in the past? Here are four reasons we continue to read them, to write them, and to love them.

Carl Sagan once said, “What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years…. Books break the shackles of time.”  

Most of us have considered the possibility of time travel. If it were possible, would you do it? My answer is usually “only if I could pop home periodically for a hot shower and a dose of antibiotics.” Nevertheless, the thought of experiencing the past in real time holds endless fascination for many of us, and until science bridges the seemingly impenetrable time barrier, the next best thing is immersing oneself in a book.

A well-researched and well-written historical mystery immerses readers in the fictional world, and the experience begins with the author. In a recent podcast, Anthony Horowitz advised authors: "Don’t stand on the edge of the book, looking as it were over the edge of the chasm. Live inside the book, looking around you. So what my characters see—what they smell, what they feel, the wind, the sunshine—if I am, as I have said, inside the book, I’m not thinking about these things. Not writing what they’re saying, I’m listening to what they’re saying."

Authors who deliver a multi-layered sensory and emotional experience of the past allow readers to travel with them in a virtual time machine to worlds populated by characters so incredibly real we mourn their loss on the final page. Through mysteries steeped in history, we can travel to the 12th century with Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael or plunge into the swirling pea-soup fog of Victorian London with Sherlock Holmes and still be home in time for supper.

Solving crimes today is primarily a matter of science and technology. The recent theft at The Louvre in Paris is an example. Within eight minutes, start to finish, the thieves entered the museum and escaped with an estimated $102 million in priceless historical jewels. And yet they left their DNA behind on a helmet, a glove, and a stolen truck with a mechanical cherry picker. That DNA was quickly matched to suspects in the police databases and using additional forensic tools such as cell phone records and video surveillance, the police were able to snag the four suspects and three possible accomplices within days.

By itself, the investigation wouldn’t make much of a plot. It was too easy. Readers want conflict, misdirection, false leads, and reversals. We want to figure it out.

Those of us who write crime fiction must take modern methods of policing into account, of course, but what happened to good old-fashioned sleuthing? If everything comes down to science, is there room for the uniquely human art of ratiocination?

One of the appeals of historical crime fiction is the challenge of following clues and exercising our powers of deductive and inductive reasoning along with the sleuth. When the author plays fair with readers, every clue needed to solve the case is laid out for us—cleverly disguised, of course, amongst red herrings designed to point us in the wrong direction. Authors love to keep readers guessing, and we love it most of all when readers say at the end, “I never saw it coming—but I should have.”

If I learned anything in my high school or college history classes about the Regency Era in England, I’ve forgotten it; but I’ve never forgotten the experience of being there through the novels of Jane Austen. “The historian will tell you what happened,” said E. L. Doctorow, the American writer of historical fiction. “The novelist will tell you what it felt like.”

Novels steeped in history bridge the gap between documented history and imaginative storytelling. Memorizing dates and facts may get you through your exam, but it won’t give you an understanding of what life was actually like in the past. That’s where the characters in our stories come in—presenting history through the power of personal narrative.

I remember helping my son, John, prepare for a high-school exam covering the history-changing sea battle in 1588 between the English navy and the Spanish Armada. John had zero interest in 16th-century European politics, ship construction, battle strategies, and the superiority of long-range canons and “hell-fire ships” over heavy siege canons and greater numbers. I soon gave up on the textbook and began to dramatize the scene, playing up the “near-miraculous” storm that kicked up in the English Channel, generating strong winds that pushed the heavy Spanish ships toward the North Sea. I knew I’d won when he started asking questions: What would have happened if the Spanish had won?

To be retained, history must fire our imaginations. Nina Wachsman, art expert and fellow writer of historical fiction, said, “The Mona Lisa didn’t become the most famous picture in the world until it was stolen in 1911.” Now we want to know who she was and what was behind that enigmatic smile.

In A Collection of Lies (2024), along with the unfolding plot and through the eyes and mouths of my characters, I layer in the history of the English Romanis, the lives of Victorian lacemakers, mid-19th century fashion, the art of historical textile conservation, the mires and bogs of Devon’s Dartmoor National Park, the Dartmoor ponies, and the vicissitudes of local British politics. Medicine, Mary Poppins reminded us, goes down better with a bit of sugar. History nerds (like me) would never call Hilaire Belloc’s “great panoply of history” medicine, but even we must admit that history goes down better when experienced through the eyes, minds, and hearts of characters we care about.

A final and major reason we love mysteries steeped in history is the human emotion of nostalgia, once described by novelist and screenwriter Michael Chabon as “the ache that arises from the consciousness of lost connection.” But a connection with what? The interesting truth is we often feel nostalgic for a past that never existed. Even our own lived pasts are commonly shaped and polished in our minds over time until they resemble the past we prefer.

Nostalgia is a coping mechanism. The anxiety produced by the uncertainty, complexity, and rapid change of modern life can be soothed by a few hours spent in an idealized historical period that delivers the simplicity, moral clarity, and predictability we crave. And because the human brain has the ability to hold two opposing truths simultaneously, we can enjoy our virtual visit to the past while knowing full well it is pure fiction.

In a talk given in 2016 at the St. Hilda’s Crime and Mystery Weekend, Martin Edwards, British crime novelist and leading authority on the crime fiction genre, said about the Golden Age mysteries: “[These books] take us back to a time that is perceived as gentler and more appealing. The reality of life in the Twenties and Thirties was very different, of course, but the past can often seem appealing. If you’re a commuter suffering on Southern Rail, for instance, it must be very tempting to escape into the world of Freeman Wills Crofts and Miles Burton, where murderers could craft their alibis safe in the knowledge that the trains would always run as per timetable.”

The pace of change today is overwhelming. No wonder we crave the comforting predictability of trains that run on time. The mysteries of the past and those written today in that tradition provide an escape from an increasingly chaotic and polarized world into the calm civility of an imagined past, satisfying our yearning for a world where logic prevails, puzzles are solved, evil is punished, and justice is restored.

Long may they live.

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