The Scent of Death - Andrew Taylor

Andrew Taylor has to be one of the best writers of historical crime.  His strengths lie in the unusual choice of setting - in this case New York City in the limbo period when it was briefly the last British outpost in post revolutionary America - brilliant characterisation, intricate plotting and, above all perhaps, scrupulous research.  When a writer includes a period map, you can be confident he knows what he's talking about.

Edward Savill is a middling English civil servant who has landed himself a prestigious post in the American Department by marrying his patron's unlovely niece.  The only downside of the post is that involves being in America.  Thus we arrive in New York with our hero.  He has barely stepped ashore when he discovers his first murder victim in the Canvas Town shanty that has sprung up to provide some sort of shelter for loyalist refugees without friends or funds, tumbled in with the usual human flotsam and jetsam of shanties worldwide since the beginning of civilisation.

During his stay Savill is billeted with the Wintour family, loyalist gentry who are sliding gently towards hard times.  In Warren Street live Judge Wintour, his gently senile wife, the beautiful Mrs Arabella Wintour (wife or perhaps widow of the missing Captain Wintour) and their various slaves.  Savill's associates in official business include Major Marryot, who has a fondness for Mrs Arabella, and Mr Townley, a genteel local fixer and social gadfly with a stay-at-home wife and a growing fortune founded on the vicissitudes of a city under effective siege.

More murders ensue, Savill's fortunes rise and fall (there is a marvellous twist concerning his wife), he travels through the Disputed Lands (now upstate New York) and resolves crime and his own fate out on the frozen River Hudson.

A marvellous book, a worthy winner of the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger 2013, and as good an introduction as any to Taylor's extensive oeuvre.  Personally I began with the captivating Anatomy of Ghosts (another winner of the Peters Dagger) and followed that with Bleeding Heart Square.  I gather The American Boy is one to look out for.  So I shall.

If the Dead Rise Not - Philip Kerr

Philip Kerr is on great form with this 2009 Bernie Gunther thriller, the sixth of eight thus far.  Kerr hops back and forth in the Gunther sequence but in this case he encompasses Berlin 1936 and Havana 1954 in one protracted case.  I've never seen anyone attempt it quite as Kerr does.  For quite a while you feel a bit cheated, simply abandoning the 1936 story at a live-or-die moment, but it really pays off when Kerr delivers the knockout twist at the very end.  I certainly didn't see it coming.

Anyway, Bernie is in his hotel detective phase, haunting the corridors of the Adlon Hotel having been purged from KRIPO for not being a Nazi.  It's the year of the Berlin Olympiad and Avery Bundage is in town to approve the Nazi games on behalf of the International Olympic Committee.  There's a fat dead guy in one of the rooms.  Looks like his heart gave out while entertaining a joy girl.  A routine chore for the staff, except that this particular fat guy was a prime bidder for the Olympic stadium contract.  Then there's a circumcized ex-boxer in the canal.  The two can't possibly be linked.  Can they?

Drop-dead gorgeous American writer Noreen Eisner Charalambides visits the Adlon and soon Bernie is ferrying her round town in her quest to unearth the unpalatable truth about the Hitler Olympiad.  A lot of the unpleasantness seems to hover around Chicago entrepreneur Max Reles.  Too much, in fact...

Then we're in Havana, eighteen years later.  Bernie is hiding behind his 'Carlos Hausner' persona (first encountered, by me at least, in A Quiet Flame), Reles is running a hotel and Noreen is staying at Ernest Hemingway's place.

If the Dead Rise Not won the 2009 CWA Ellis Peters Award for historical crime fiction.  And I'm not a bit surprised.  Essential reading for fans of the genre.