Riveting reads
IMOGEN ROBERTSON nominates her favourites from this year’s bumper crop of gripping historical fiction
It’s heartening to see that 2016 has offered up a flow of excellent new works from established writers and a slew of vigorous and thoughtful debuts. MMy choices are highlights from aan impressive field.
The Ornatrix by Kate Howard (Duckworth) is my pick of the ddebuts. Howard luxuriates in the pphysicality of her 16th-century Italian setting and the poisonous questt ffor bbeautyt in this sensual, earthy novel. Shot through with seams of gothic darkness, it continually absorbs, seduces and surprises.
Robyn Young, author of the bbestselling Brethren Trilogy, eembarks on her New World Rising sseries with the riveting Sons of the
B Blood (Hodder & Stoughton). TTurning her talents for epic adventurea and rich historical ddetailingili to theh Wars of the Roses, Young’s charging narrative follows the trials of a young man entrusted with a world-changing secret in dangerousg times.
The current appetite for Wars oof the Roses fiction has also been ssharpened and satisfied this year bby the third in Toby Clements’s KKingmaker series, Divided Souls (Century). Providing a ground up view of the conflict, the novel is another earthy, bloody, tour de force. A dark jewel of historical crime,
T The Black Friar by SG MacLean (Quercus) is the second novel aabout Damian Seeker, captain of CCromwell’s guard. He is a compelling aanti-hero and the mysteries he is facedf with, beginning with a body ffounddbikdbricked up in the ruins of Blackfriars, are satisfyingly complex. MacLean recreates Protectorate London with authority, rendering the world of conspiracies, rebellion and the ever-present possibility of violence gripping aand convincing.
William Ryan’s 1930s Stalinist-era ccrime novels have won him an eenthusiastic readership. This year he sshifts focus to the close of the Second WWorld War, with The Constant
S Soldier (Mantle). In this tense and subtlebtl thriller,thill the central character returns from the horrors of the eastern front badly wounded to find himself living in the shadow of a luxurious SS retreat. It’s a masterpiece of empathetic imagination and storytelling flair.
Providing a ground up view of the conflict, the novel is another earthy, bloody, tour de force