It's one of the most successful—and surprising—of phenomena in the entire crime fiction genre: detectives (and proto-detectives) solving crimes in earlier eras. Barry Forshaw has written a lively, wide-ranging and immensely informed history of the genre, which might be said to have begun in earnest with Ellis Peters’ crime-solving monk Brother Cadfael in the 1970s and Umberto Eco’s
The Name of the Rose
in 1980 (with another monkish detective), but which has now taken readers to virtually every era and locale in the past. Forshaw has produced the perfect reader's guide to a fascinating field; every major writer is considered, often through a concentration on one or two key books, and exciting new talents are highlighted.