Black Gold by Charles O’Brien is an excellent follow-up to his first novel, Mute Witness. O’Brien moves the setting of Black Gold from Paris, France to Bath, England. Here is a summary of the book from Publishers Weekly: In the winter of 1787, Col. Paul de Saint-Martin, who played a leading role in Mute Witness, [...]
The Terror: The Shadow of the Guillotine: France 1792-1794 by Graeme Fife is a fascinating look at France as it was torn apart by the French Revolution. As the publisher notes, Fife draws on contemporary police files, eyewitness accounts, and directives from the sinister Committee for Public Safety, and heart-wrenching last letters from prisoners awaiting [...]
Threshold of Terror: The Last Hours of the Monarchy in the French Revolution by Rodney Allen is an exciting and engaging piece of work. Allen brings to life the last vestiges of Louis XVI’s reign. The book primarily centers on August 10 and 11, 1792 – when “the mob” stormed the Tuileries to end Louis’ [...]
After reading a book about the last hours of the French Monarchy in the French Revolution (review to follow shortly), I found myself drawn to this time period in France. In this vein, I just finished an historical mystery entitled Mute Witness by Charles O’Brien. It is the first book in a series and, based [...]
River God by Wilbur Smith is an epic novel that centers on the lives of three people who live in ancient Egypt – Taita, Lady Lostris, and Tanus. The story is written from the perspective of Taita, a slave who is owned by an Egyptian noble and eventually given to Lady Lostris. Here is a [...]
Michael Jecks’ ninth book in his medieval murder series, The Traitor of St. Giles, is the best yet. The first few books in the series were a little long on detail and short on plot, but that has been remedied in the last few books in the series. Here is a brief summary of the [...]
The book, A Special Mission: Hitler’s Secret Plot to Seize the Vatican and Kidnap Pope Pius XII by Dan Kurzman, is on a topic few people know about. I had read snippets of such a plot in general histories of World War II before reading this book, but did not think much about it. Kurzman [...]
Warlords: An Extraordinary Re-creation of World War II Through the Eyes and Minds of Hitler, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin by Simon Berthon and Joanna Potts is a fascinating and eye-opening read. Berthon and Potts do an excellent job in bringing these larger-than-life men down to Earth. Here is a brief description of the book from [...]