Books like The Last Protector — picked by fans

This is the first in Antonia Hodgson’s so-good-you-could-eat-it Thomas Hawkins series. It’s set in London in 1727 and the plot revolves around a likeable rake, Hawkins, whose dedication to dice, booze, and women leads him to ruin – but with the help of others. Finding himself in the notorious Marshalsea Prison – think Alcatraz but without the water and with leprosy and lice instead – and you have the makings of a wonderful prison-break type story. Hodgson’s characters – Hawkins, but also his love interest, Kitty Sparks – aren’t just alive but bring the past alive with them. It’s like Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones with the vividness of the Sixties, but then, if you know anything about eighteenth-century London, you’ll know that it was pretty wild place. This, after all, was long before the Victorians came along with their rather puritan social mores.

I love this book, which I have read several times, because it provides a lot of detail about Britain and America in the seventeenth century and the political troubles at the time.

Robert Harris’s writing style is brilliant as always, and as with all of his books, it was difficult to put down. The descriptions of the main character’s travels, especially in America, in an effort to hunt down his quarries are excellent. 

Incredibly, the author manages to create sympathy in the minds of readers for the regicides who are being hunted, even though they signed King Charles I's death warrant, and yet one also sympathises with the hunter.

Famous for his crookbacked sleuth Shardlake series, CJ Sansom sets this standalone counter-factual historical thriller in 1950s Britain – one where the United Kingdom had capitulated to Nazi Germany in 1940 (with Lord Halifax and not Winston Churchill becoming prime minister) and has become a German client state. It conjures up the 1950s – the smog, the coal smoke, the tea shops – while sketching out an alternate reality, one which is highly plausible, thereby doing one of the things I love best about historical fiction – showing us how different things could easily have been and shaking us from any complacency. More than this, Dominion is a highly effective thriller, as civil servant David Fitzgerald becomes the man in the middle of a politico-spy page-turner that keeps you guessing till the end.

This is a crime novel set in 1919 Calcutta. We follow Captain Sam Wyndham, who is a former Scotland Yard detective seeking a fresh start after the emotional wounds following WWI and the death of his wife.

When a senior official is murdered, he doesn't hold back during his search from British mansions to seedy opium dens with his new sidekick, Sergeant Banerjee. Rising tensions, the clash of societies, the heat, dirt, and crowding all contribute to bringing this colorful period to life.

This is the debut novel and the first in a remarkably well-told series so interesting I found it impossible to put down. 

The Seeker takes us through the streets of Cromwellian London in the 1650s, a period rarely considered by historical crime novelists, but one of paranoia as Cromwell’s regime struggles to crush the enemies seeking to overthrow it. The novel introduces the character of Captain Damian Seeker, Cromwell’s mysterious agent who is a force to be reckoned with.

Only one night with a handsome stranger in London? This has been my dream forever, and once I read this blurb, I immediately one clicked.

Sandi Lynn made me feel like I was literally living this, and I found it almost impossible to drag my eyes away. I wanted this book to continue forever, and if you haven't read it already, you need to.

Jewel thieves, undercover investigation, and - a fake engagement? I seriously could not predict the twists and turns aplenty in this book from Erin Swann which made me gasp several times, and then frantically keep reading.

I adored the clever descriptions that Erin crafted, and it became impossible not to fall in love with her characters. Grab it now.

In the depths of the Cotswolds, Andy Caplet is a small-town journalist with a disastrous career (and life). Until, that is, the mysterious Inspector Hobbes offers him a spare room and the chance to follow along on some investigations. The only problem being, none of the cases are exactly the usual sort of crime, and Inspector Hobbes is not a usual inspector. Or a usual human. These stories are just fun, goofy escapism, caught somewhere between cosy mystery and urban fantasy, and they’re pure entertainment. Andy can be a bit annoying, but Inspector Hobbes is delightful.

A love letter to London, this novel takes place immediately after the war, as a newlywed couple tries to pick up the pieces and fall in love again. But she’s keeping secrets from him—she must, having served as a codebreaker at Bletchley Park. And he’s struggling with nightmares from his service as an army medic. When her former boss ropes her in to help bring down a Soviet spy ring somehow connected to her beloved Christopher Wren churches, the secrets and nightmares could very well defeat them. A beautiful tale with literary depth.

Visiting London at its most coal-caked and financially stratified, The Affair of the Porcelain Dog was Holmes-like in its execution, and pulled me into its mystery from the opening so steeped in the time and place and culture, and then never let go. Ira Adler is so charming a character that even when he was being selfish or spoiled I was smitten. An orphan, street thief, pickpocket, and former rent boy now living in luxury at the beck and call of a crime lord, Ira ends up tasked to recover the titular “dog” statue, which contains a secret that could ruin everything, and bring Ira's comfortable new life to an end. Philip Battley’s narration was so completely immersive, and had me there with Ira, hoping he’d somehow pull it off.