Twenty-One Days by Anne Perry

Twenty-One Days by Anne Perry - 303 pages ⭐⭐✫✫✫

Young defense attorney Daniel Pitt has twenty-one days to prove his client's innocence, else his client will be executed for murdering his wife.  

Have you ever watched a two-hour episode of Dateline that didn't need to be two hours long?  Upon returning from each commercial break, you get to hear The Facts Thus Far summed up over and over, while the detectives continue to be stymied by the case that's rapidly growing cold.  It's not until hour two that things start to get interesting.  By the end, you find out that the murderer is whoever you thought it was all along, and you think of all the much more worthwhile things you could've done with your time. 

Twenty-One Days is like one of those two-hour Dateline episodes.  Most of the book consists of Daniel either filling in his acquaintances on The Facts Thus Far, or debating whether his client is guilty.  These conversations and musings are almost always repeats of each other, adding little or nothing to what the characters had previously talked or thought about.  I was only about 80 pages in when I began to doubt that Anne Perry had enough story for a 300 page novel.  

To make matters worse, there is very little description of the setting or the characters.  This is historical fiction, set in the Edwardian period, but it lacks atmosphere that would give it a real sense of time and place.  Mentions of women's suffrage and Daniel's amazement at an X-ray machine are the only elements that establish the setting.  Perry's descriptions of rooms are decent, but her descriptions of London are minimal at best and nonexistent at worst.  Character descriptions are equally lacking, often so ambiguous as to be useless.  Perry repeatedly describes one character as having an "odd face."  What is that supposed to mean?  "Odd" is so vague and subjective that it remains a mystery what Perry meant this character to look like.  Instead of springing to life, the characters and setting remained indistinct in my mind, mere words on the page rather than real people in a real city.

This is not to say that Twenty-One Days has no redeeming qualities.  Daniel Pitt is a likeable character, reminiscent of Phoenix Wright in that he is an inexperienced and rather naïve attorney with a detective's instinct.  The plot does become more interesting towards the second half of the book, with a few twists I didn't see coming.  For the most part, however, Twenty-One Days offers all of the repetition of a too-long Dateline episode without Keith Morrison's chilling narration -- and I would rather watch one of those episodes than read this book again.  Unfortunately, this book is the pit(t)s.  

Midnight at Marble Arch by Anne Perry

Midnight at Marble Arch: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel by Anne Perry --- 337 pages

This is the 26th novel in Perry's series featuring Thomas Perry (now head of Special Branch, the special British police unit organized at the turn of the 19th century to deal with European anarchists and Irish revolutionaries), and his clever wife Charlotte.

Thomas and his predecessor at Special Branch, Victor Narraway, become involved in the investigation into the brutal rape and subsequent suicide of the wife of a wealthy and influential London investment banker. Meanwhile, the observant Charlotte suspects that several young debutantes have also been sexually assaulted by a young man of dissolute and violent disposition. One of them, the daughter of the Portuguese ambassador, falls to her death in the middle of a ball. Is this coincidence? Can there be two violent rapists attacking socially prominent women in London? Is there more at work here than appears on the surface? Although these crimes appear to fall outside the remit of Special Branch, Narroway appeals to Thomas to help, and Charlotte urges him on.

Then the police make an arrest. Narroway, Thomas and Charlotte are convinced that the man arrested is not the rapist. But their efforts to find evidence to prove his innocence are thwarted by the accused's strange reluctance to reveal the true reasons for his frequent meetings with the banker's wife.

Anne Perry tells a compelling tale, revealing the dark side of the glittering British Empire at the height of its power, corruption and hypocrisy.

A Sunless Sea by Anne Perry

A Sunless Sea: A William Monk Novel by Anne Perry --- 372 pages

I enjoy British murder mysteries, especially those set in the past. Anne Perry has two excellent series: her William Monk mysteries, set in mid19th century London; and her Charlotte and Thomas Pitt mysteries, set in late 19th/early 20th century London.

The particularly gruesome murder of a middle-aged prostitute on Limehouse Pier soon lands Monk, his wife Hester, and the brilliant barrister Sir Oliver Rathbone in a tangled web of deception thrown up by government ministers, ostensibly to protect the grieving family when a prominent doctor committed suicide after his research on opium use and abuse was rejected by the government. Gradually Monk and Hester begin to suspect that the doctor did not commit suicide but died at the hands of someone who is profiting from the opium trade. And that someone is a powerful man high in government circles, who is manipulating the police and the courts to cover up his own crimes.

The doctor's wife Dinah has insisted from the start that her husband was murdered to prevent him from speaking out. Now she is being framed for the murder of the so-called prostitute. Her conviction and execution will ensure that her accusations and her husband's reputation are thoroughly discredited.

While Monk and Hester, and a few trusted associates, work frantically to uncover the truth, Rathbone must use every weapon in his legal arsenal to defend Dinah and prolong the trial until they can find the evidence to confirm their suspicions. When Rathbone realizes that even the judge has been co-opted by the conspiracy, he must decide whether he should make use of another, darker weapon that fate has placed in his hand.

Dorchester Terrace by Anne Perry

Dorchester Terrace: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel by Anne Perry --- 333 pages

It's 1896, and the British Empire seems impregnable, with London the glittering center of world power. Thomas Pitt, a man of humble birth who started life as a lowly London bobby, has now succeeded his mentor as head of Britain's Special Branch, the department charged with the protection of the realm against all enemies foreign and domestic. Pitt knows he still has to prove himself up to the job, not only to the powerful men to whom he answers, but also to his own subordinates --- and most painfully, to himself. His mentor Lord Narraway has warned him that his two biggest challenges will be to stop assuming the powerful men are also wise and virtuous, and to accept that there will be situations where he must be judge, jury and executioner.

Pitt has often relied on the assistance of his spirited and intelligent wife, Charlotte, to help him navigate the shark-infested waters of London high society, but now feels he cannot confide the details of his cases to her because of national security concerns. Charlotte is equally sensitive to the demands and pressures of her husband's new job, but determined to help him still in any way she can.

Pitt's first challenge arrives with rumors of a terrorist conspiracy to assassinate Duke Alois Habsburg, a minor member of the Austrian royal family, during a private visit to his royal English relations in London. What Pitt cannot understand is why someone would go to so much trouble to kill the Duke, who is reputed to be a studious eccentric with no involvement in politics at all. Or is this a diversion to distract Special Branch from some far more dangerous plot? Pitt's efforts to investigate are hampered by the refusal of Lord Tregarron, the head of Austrian affairs in the Foreign Office, to take him seriously, until Pitt goes over Tregarron's head to reach the Prime Minister.

Meanwhile, Charlotte's "aunt" by marriage, the well-connected and politically astute Lady Vespasia is troubled by the suspicious death of an old compatriot from the days of the ill-fated Revolution of 1848, when freedom fighters tried to break away from the repressive Austrian-Hungarian regime in Eastern Europe. Vespasia calls on Lord Narraway for assistance in determining the truth. When it turns out that Serafina was murdered, Special Branch steps in to investigate. Pitt, Charlotte, Lord Narraway and Lady Vespasia are convinced there is some connection between the murder and the assassination plot.

Are all these threads linked somehow? Is there a traitor lurking in the halls of government? And if so, why? Can Pitt and Charlotte discover who is pulling the strings behind the scenes before the unknown assassin makes his move?