Top ten Victorian detective stories

James McCreet is the author of The Incendiary's Trail, a Victorian detective thriller influenced by the early works of Edgar Allan Poe and drawing on detailed historical research.

For the Guardian, he named a top ten list of Victorian detective stories. One title on the list:

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Dickens was fascinated with the idea of detection and spent much time with real detectives to produce journalism including "The Modern Science of Thief-Taking" and "A Detective Police Party". In Bleak House, he is one of the first authors to feature such an investigator in the form of the sober and practical Inspector Bucket, very likely influenced by the real Inspector Field.

Read about another Victorian detective story on McCreet's list.

Bleak House is one of Rebecca Ford's favorite five fiction books and is on John Mortimer's list of the five best books about law and literature and among the top ten works of literature according to Stephen King.

--Marshal Zeringue