This is a collection of specially-commissioned (bar one) historical crime stories from established authors in the genre. They are generally longer stories and mostly feature characters from the authors' published works.

In general I found this to be a pretty rum bunch of tales. Some of them barely stray into crime fiction territory and most of the authors reveal a distinct unfamiliarity with the short fiction form (being writers of novel length works). Stories end very abruptly, as though suddenly bumping up against an imposed word limit, or are unbalanced across beginning, middle and end.

I expected to find an intriguing series of standalone stories that might lead me to the authors' longer fiction. Instead, I think these stories will appeal most to completists among existing fans of the characters included. ( )

Nice collection of historical crime fiction spanning from the Bronze Age to the recent past. ( )

The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction, edited by Mike Ashley, is a 2011 collection of 12 novellas set in varying historical and even prehistorical periods, ranging from Bronze-Age Britain ("Jettisoned," by Deirdre Counihan) to 1930s New York City (Richard A. Lupoff's Nero Wolfe pastiche, "Dead of Winter") with many stops in time and place along the way. All but one of these was written specifically for this anthology; Anne Perry's "Brodie and the Regrettable Incident" is the only one not in that category, having been published in another anthology in 1998, and as it happens is one of my favourites in this collection. Some stories feature characters well-known from other books, such as the young Gordianus the Finder in Steven Saylor's "Something to do with Diana," Peter Tremayne's 7th Century Irish lawyer-equivalent Fidelma in "Night of the Snow Wolf," or Inspector Rutledge of Scotland Yard, a veteran of the Great War complete with shell shock and the voice of a ghost, in Charles Todd's "Trafalgar." Other authors include Tom Holt, Mary Reed and Eric Mayer, Ian Morson, Tony Pollard, Dorothy Lumley and Maan Meyers. As ever with anthologies, some stories work better for me than others, but only the Meyers one ("Forty Morgan Silver Dollars"), set in New York City in approximately 1900 and featuring Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, didn't work for me at all; the rest were all quite enjoyable and, in the case of the Lupoff, quite funny too; plus I could also wish for more of Brodie from Anne Perry, thank you very much! If you like historical mysteries, this is an excellent sampler of some of the best practitioners working in the field today; recommended. ( )