Historical
A faithfully rendered past era whose period detail, manners, and constraints shape the plot.
All 4 historical reviews, latest first
- 6.8competent A Study in Scarlet A dry, observant doctor narrates taking rooms with a consulting detective who can read a stranger's whole history at a glance.
- 7.0good The Picture of Dorian Gray A portrait that ages while its subject stays young, set in a fin-de-siècle London of roses, fog, opium and impossible epigrams.
- 7.5good Three Men in a Boat A comic masterpiece in stretches and a padded magazine anthology in others — skim the guidebook pages and you hold one of the funniest books ever written.
- 7.0good The Call of the Wild A brutal, beautiful dog's-eye epic of the frozen North, dated in its caricatures but still propulsive.