The Twisted Root by Anne Perry

The Twisted Root: A Novel by Anne Perry --- 346 pages

In the tenth book in Perry's William Monk series, set in Victorian England, private enquiry agent William Monk and his bride, nurse Hester Latterly, are just returned from their honeymoon and settling into their new roles as husband and wife, when Monk is asked to search for a lady who fled precipitously from her own engagement party and has not been seen or heard from since. 

The frantic young bridegroom, Lucius Stourbridge, wants Monk's help to locate  his missing fiance, Mrs. Miriam Gardiner, a young widow in modest circumstances, with whom he fell in love at first sight.

All was well between them, he insists; his parents had welcomed the engagement, even though Miriam's bith and background did not compare to his own as the heir to wealth, a great estate and a distinguished name.   

Miriam ran from the party at his parents' London townhouse, along with the Stourbridge's coachman, Treadwell, and their coach and horses. At first Lucius and his family supposed she had asked Treadwell to take her back to her own house, on Hampstead Heath.  But Miriam is not at her home, and the coachman, coach and horses have also vanished.

Lucius is crushed; his parents and his maternal uncle, Aiden Campbell, who traveled to London just to attend the engagement party, all profess themselves mystified and equally concerned. However, when Monk interviews them separately, Lucius's mother, Verona Stourbridge, admits Miriam was, socially, not the ideal match for her son, often over-familiar with servants --- and at least nine years older than Lucius.

As Monk continues to investigate, he discovers the missing coachman has turned up, murdered, on Hampstead Heath.  Indeed the evidence shows the dying man had crawled some distance, and his body was found sprawled on the footpath leading to the house where Miriam Gardiner's foster mother still lives. With still no sign of Miriam herself, the police consider her a prime suspect in the murder. Monk, who was once a police investigator himself, until he was fired for insubordination, finds that solution a little too obvious and convenient. With Hester's assistance, Monk pursues a broader investigation, looking into the past for reasons that explain Miriam's strange behavior. As all good Anne Perry mysteries do, the truth is only revealed in a final, climactic courtroom scene.

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Dark Tide Rising by Anne Perry

Dark Tide Rising: A William Monk Novel by Anne Perry --- 289 pages

This is the 24th entry in Anne Perry's atmospheric Victorian mystery series featuring William Monk, Commander of the Thames River Police, and his wife Hester, a nurse who volunteered to serve with Florence Nightingale on the front lines of the Crimean War. 

Kate Exeter, the wife of a wealthy London real estate developer, has been  kidnapped in broad daylight from a riverside walk in Battersea Park, witnessed by her cousin and confidante Celia Darwin.The kidnappers have demanded an enormous ransom, which her frantic husband Harry Exeter has barely managed to scrape together in the 24 hours allowed him. Exeter has been directed to bring the ransom to a meeting place deep in the waterlogged and sinking slums of Jacob's Island, and he asks Monk to accompany him --- to insure that he finds the right spot and gets his wife safely away after the money is handed over. Monk, who still suffers flashbacks from when Hester was kidnapped --- Corridors of the Night (2015) ---  takes five of his most trusted officers, hoping that once Exeter and his wife are safe, he and his men can return to track down the kidnappers. But on the night of the exchange, all their careful plans go disastrously awry when Monk and his men are brutally ambushed.

Who is to blame for what went wrong? Monk must face the terrible suspicion that one of his own men betrayed his plan to the kidnappers. Now he and his men have a murder to solve, but tensions mount because no one knows who can be trusted. Then a bookkeeper for the banker who helped Harry Exeter raise the money for the ransom approaches Monk with her suspicions that money has been quietly disappearing from a large trust fund that Kate Exeter was due to inherit within a year. Suspicions that point to Kate's cousin and trustee, Maurice Latham; to the bank manager, Roger Doyle; even to Harry Exeter himself.

Anne Perry at her best, with several overlapping mysteries to solve: kidnapping, murders, embezzlement and betrayal.

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye

Jane Steele: A Novel by Lyndsay Faye --- 436 pages including a Discussion guide and a Conversation with the Author.

Like the heroine of Jane Eyre, the orphaned Jane Steele suffers at the hands of a hostile family and a cruelly indifferent world. Like Jane Eyre, Jane Steele rebels, and her tormentors call her wicked and unnatural. But Jane Steele is afraid they are right. When she escapes to London, she leaves behind a trail of the corpses of her tormentors. There she hides from the law in London's most notorious neighborhoods, and supports herself by writing and selling macabre "last confessions" of condemned criminals to an avid public.  By chance she learns that her aunt has died and a distant relation has inherited her ancestral home, Highgate House. Mr. Charles Thornfield, late of the Anglo-Sikh Wars in the Punjab, seeks a governess for his young ward, Sahjara Kaur.  Anxious to prove that she is the rightful heir to Highgate, Jane applies for the job. But she never anticipated that she would develop an affection for her young charge, or find acceptance in the unconventional household --- or fall desperately in love with the enigmatic man she proposes to supplant.

A wonderfully macabre and entertaining tribute to Charlotte Bronte's classic proto-feminist novel,
Faye's book was optioned for a film adaptation by 1492 Pictures just days before its publication.

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read the review from the New York Times.

Click HERE to read the review from the New York Daily News.

Click HERE to read the review from NPR.

Click HERE to watch the YouTube review by squibblesreads. 

The Woman in the Water: by Charles Finch

The Woman in the Water: A Prequel to the Charles Lenox Series by Charles Finch --- 292 pages

American author Charles Finch has taken a fresh approach to his long-running Victorian mystery series featuring an aristocratic ex-member of Parliament who finally takes up his long held ambition to become a private detective.

This prequel, set some twenty years prior to the original series, gives us a look at the young Charles Lenox, just come down from Oxford and taking up residence in London.  As the younger son of a baronet, Charles has no preordained occupation --- his brother Edmund is the heir to their father's title and estate. As a gentleman with a private income and a university degree, however, the range of socially acceptable occupations for Charles is actually quite limited: the Army, the Church, government service such as the diplomatic corps or a seat in Parliament, or (just barely beginning to be tolerated) some very discreet connection with investments in the City. 

But Charles, to the dismay of his family and friends, is fascinated by crime. So when he finds a letter published in one of the London tabloids, in which the writer boasts he has committed the "perfect"murder, and intends to murder again in one month, so that people are forced to pay attention, Charles takes it as a personal challenge. He and his valet, Graham, connect the boastful letter to the body of a young woman found strangled inside an old trunk washed up on an island in the Thames. So far the police have failed to identify the victim, much less her killer. Lenox pulls strings to see Sir Richard Mayne, the Commissioner of London's fledging police force at Scotland Yard. His offer of assistance is  initially declined, but when a second murder does occur, and Lenox is able to prove that it is linked to the first, Mayne offers him a role in the investigation. 

Click HERE to read an interview with the author talking about The Woman in the Water.

Click HERE to read the review in Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review in Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read the review in the Washington Post.

A Christmas Return by Anne Perry

A Christmas Return by Anne Perry --- 176 pages

The fifteenth in Perry's annual holiday novellas featuring supporting characters from her two Victorian murder mystery series in stories that cleverly combine murder and Christmas.

Twenty years ago, in the village of Haslemere, Surrey, a young girl was found raped and murdered. The village doctor, Owen Durward, was accused of the crime. A local barrister, Cullen Wesley, had reluctantly undertaken to defend Durward; then, just before the trial was set to begin, he suddenly withdrew from the case. Although Durward retained another attorney and was subsequently acquitted, no one knew why Wesley had so abruptly withdrawn --- because Wesley died that same night in a freak accident in his own home.

Now Owen Durward has reappeared in Haslemere, declaring his intention to clear his name of lingering suspicions and spreading salacious rumors about Wesley's widow, Rowena.

Rowena doesn't have the strength of will to fight Durward, so in desperation, her grandson Peter sends to their old family friend, Mariah Ellison, and begs  her to help.

Mariah is the irascible grandmother of Charlotte Pitt, from Anne Perry's Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series. For years she's been a penance endured by her dutiful family, but recently she's undergone a transforming experience (see A Christmas Guest - 2005), recognizing her anger is rooted in her own past pain and humiliation. She hasn't seen Rowena in the twenty years since Cullen's death --- she acknowledges that she was secretly in love with Cullen herself and didn't think Rowena was clever enough to deserve such a husband.  But all that is bygones; what matters now is to defend Cullen's reputation, to justify Peter's faith in her, and to bring a killer to justice at last.

Click HERE to read a review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read a review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read a review from the Historical Novel Society blog.

The Inheritance by Charles Finch

The Inheritance: A Charles Lenox Mystery by Charles Finch --- 294 pages

Tenth volume in the mystery series set in Victorian London, with a former member of Parliament who has thrown over politics in favor of a career as a private detective.

Charles Finch is contacted by an old school friend who is visitng London because of an unexpected and mysterious legacy. To his surprise, Finch learns that Gerald Leigh has become a celebrated scientist, invited to speak to the Royal Society about his work with microbes. But for some reason Leigh is being pursued by two thugs from one of London's most notorious street gangs; he's been attacked and narrowly escaped twice already. Not surprisingly, Leigh is ready to chuck London, the legacy, and the Royal Society, and return to his travels. But when the highly respectable solicitor who was handling the details of the legacy is found murdered in his chambers, Leigh relectantly agrees that the situation merits further investigation.

The Lenox series is notable for its attention to the details of life in Victorian London, from the privileged life of the upper classes to the desperate poverty of the slums.  An enjoyable read for fans of the classic British mystery.

Click HERE for the review in Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE for the review in Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE for a review from the Denver Post.

Click HERE for the review from the Historical Novel Society web site.

Ruler of the Night by David Morrell

Ruler of the Night by David Morrell --- 342 pages including Acknowledgements

Ruler of the Night is the final volume in David Morrell's Victorian murder-mystery trilogy featuring Thomas DeQuincey as his gifted amateur sleuth

Like Murder as a Fine Art and Inspector of the Dead — the first two books in the trilogy — Ruler of the Night closely follows the tragic career of the real Thomas DeQuincey a prolific English writer best known today for his battle with opium addiction, as detailed in his memoir, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, published in 1821. Along with his daughter Emily and two (fictional) London detectives, Sean Ryan and Joseph Becker, DeQuincey uses his knowledge of the human condition to solve a series of seemingly senseless and brutal murders, while battling his own addiction to laudanum. And just as in the first two books, Ruler of the Night is also based on a real crime; the first murder to occur on an English train, although, for his own purposes, Morrell has the fictionalized crime occur in 1855, ten years earlier than the actual event.

Because the manners and morals of the Victorian period are so foreign to our own, the research necessary to accurately convey the social and political context that makes the story come alive for modern readers was immense, and yet the telling details are inserted without ever interrupting the rapid flow of the narrative.

DeQuincey is also remembered for his controversial essay, “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts,” the inspiration for the first novel in Morrell's trilogy.

Ruler of the Night even ends with a fictional solution to the mystery that haunted the real DeQuincey's entire life. To fully appreciate what Morrell has achieved here it's best to read the entire trilogy in order. 

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read the review on the Historical Novel Society web site.

Home by Nightfall by Charles Finch

Home by Nightfall: A Charles Lenox Mystery by Charles Finch --- 294 pages

It's 1876 and Charles Lenox has abandoned his promising career in Parliament in favor of his fascination with detection. Drawing on his reputation and contacts as an amateur sleuth, he is now a partner in a detective agency, along with his former protegee Lord John Dallington, and the intrepid Miss Polly Strickland.

Just now London is agog with the mysterious disappearance of a celebrated German pianist and favorite of the Royal family. Charles and his partners desperately want to be called in by Scotland Yard to consult on the case, but their overtures have been rebuffed, and a rival agency has been hired instead.

Charles is also concerned about the desolate state of his elder brother Sir Edmund, who is mourning the sudden death of his wife Molly. When business requires Edmund to return to the family estate in Sussex where Molly died, Charles decides to go with him. No sooner have they arrived then they learn that the peace of Lenox House and the nearby village of Markethouse has been disturbed by a series of small but strange incidents targeting a respectable resident of the village. Lenox investigates, coaxing his brother to participate (in the hopes of distracting Edmund from his grief). But as the odd happenings continue, Charles begins to suspect there is something seriously amiss in Markethouse.

Juggling two myserious cases, one on London and one in Sussex, Charles finds his powers of detection challenged at every turn. Neither case is as simple as it seemed at first. Reputations and lives are hanging precariously in the balance. Worst of all, Charles finds no matter what he does, any sense of justice achieved is ambivalent at best.

Finch writes well: his characters come alive on the page, his plots are fiendishly clever, and his research incorporates fascinating details of everyday life in Victorian England.  This is the ninth book in the Charles Lenox Mysteries Series. It can be read as a stand alone, but I recommend reading the series in order, starting with A Beautiful Blue Death.

Click HERE for a review from Publisher's Weekly.

Click HERE for a review from the Reading the Past Blog.

Click HERE for a review from The Bookwyrm's Hoard web site.

The Angel Court Affair by Anne Perry

The Angel Court Affair: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel by Anne Perry --- 273 pages

I am a fan of Anne Perry's Victorian mystery series, both the Pitts, and the William Monk books, so I am sad to say I was disappointed in The Angel Court Affair, the thirtieth book in this series of Victorian police thrillers.

The premise was intriguing: a charismatic and controversial evangelist comes home to England to preach her unsettling new doctrine. At a time when the world is already reeling from social, scientific, and political turmoil, some people are desperate for a new revelation to guide them, while others see established belief as the last bastion of defense against chaos.

Is Sofia Delacruz the saint her followers exalt, or a charlatan as her detractors --- including her estranged cousin --- claim?  Unfortunately, Sofia is kidnapped early in the proceedings, and becomes only a shadow character fleetingly glimpsed throughout the remainder of the novel. Thomas and Charlotte (who has unfortunately become pretty much a minor character in the series since Thomas took command of Special Branch) and their daughter Jemima spend interminable pages lamenting their disillusionment with conventional religion.

The story only regains its direction when Thomas turns to Lady Vespasia and her new husband, Victor Narroway (Thomas's former mentor), for assistance. With their help Thomas finally discovers the connection between Sofia and her abductor. Fraud is indeed at the root of the crime, but not religious fraud.  Thomas and Victor race against time to find the place where Sofia is being held prisoner before the abductor disposes of her.  

Click HERE to read a review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read a review from the LDS website Wheat and Tares which casts some light on the religious aspects of the plot.

Click HERE to read comments on GoodReads.

 

The Laws of Murder by Charles Finch

The Laws of Murder: A Charles Lenox Mystery by Charles Finch --- 290 pages

This is the eighth book in Finch's Victorian mystery series featuring private investigator Charles Lenox.

It’s 1876, and Charles Lenox, has just given up his seat in Parliament after six years, primed to return to his first profession, detection. With high hopes he and his friend Lord John Dallington have decided to create a consulting detective agency, the first of its kind. The partnership also includes two other private inquiry agents that have been friendly rivals of Lenox and Dallington in the past: Mrs. Polly Buchanan, a well born but penniless widow, and the Frenchman, LeMaire. But much to Lenox's surprise and chagrin, his new venture is ridiculed and belittled in the press, with slighting comments from Scotland Yard inspectors whom he considered friends and colleagues. Months pass, and while the other partners are attracting business to the firm, Lenox has not a single client to show for himself.

Then late one night Scotland Yard shows up on Lenox's doorstep. Inspector Thomas Jenkins, foremost of Lenox's detractors, is found murdered near Regent’s Park. In fact, his body lies almost at the doorstep of the Marquess of Wakefield, a peer of unsavory reputation whom both the police and Lenox have pursued in the past without success. Jenkins, inexplicably, has left precise instructions that in the event of his own death, Charles Lenox must be called in to consult on the case.  As Lenox and Dallington begin their investigation the mystery thickens as they discover Lord Wakefield disappeared shortly before Jenkins' murder. Lenox perseveres on the trail in spite of threats against himself and his family, uncovering a scandal that reaches into the highest echelons of society.

Click HERE to read reviews of the book on GoodReads.

Bellman & Black by Diane Setterfield

Bellman & Black by Diane Setterfield --- 328 pages

I remember spending a sunny Sunday afternoon sitting on the couch and reading Henry James' The Turn of the Screw for my high school English class. Totally mesmerized, and so scared I didn't dare take my eyes off the page, for fear of what I might see lurking in the corners of the room. Now that's my idea of a Gothic tale!

Diane Setterfield's Bellman & Black is, to my mind, just such another unsettling tale. Her premise is simple: a young boy's careless act affects the whole course of his life and inflicts a remorseless penance. The working out of this --- self-inflicted? --- curse is rendered in carefully chosen detail. Setterfield wields language like an artist wields his brush. One reviewer suggested that this book is Setterfield's homage to Charles Dickens and the Victorian preoccupation with death and mourning.

Reviews have been mixed. This is Setterfield's second novel; her first, The Thirteenth Tale, a re-imagining of Jane Eyre, was hailed as a modern masterpiece. Fans of that book have been waiting seven years for Setterfield to repeat herself.  Bellman & Black, if it was judged on its own merits and not by comparison, would I think have fared better. The book has certainly generated a lot on conversation among book bloggers.

Click HERE to read a review of Bellman & Black.

Click HERE to watch a great trailer for the book!

  

Death on Blackheath by Anne Perry

Death on Blackheath: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel by Anne Perry --- 302 pages

The 27th volume in Perry's long running and popular historical mystery series featuring Charlotte and Thomas Pitt. It's 1897, and the British Empire is beset from without and within. Thomas Pitt, Commander of Special Branch, is responsible for protecting the security of the state from its enemies. But there are those who wonder if he is up to the job.

A macabre scene has been discovered outside a house on Shooters Hill near Greenwich. The evidence suggests a vicious attack in the dark hours of a freezing cold night. There are bloodstains, shattered glass, and matted hanks of long auburn hair. And an auburn-haired lady's maid, Kitty Ryder, has disappeared from that same house that very night. Pitt and his trusted assistant Davey Stoker are called onto the case because the house belongs to Dudley Kynaston, who works on new weapons for the British Navy, with access to vital military secrets. 

But although Kitty Ryder has disappeared, seemingly without a trace, from Kynaston's household, without more definitive evidence, Pitt's investigations are stymied. Then, a few weeks later,  a corpse mutilated beyond recognition, but physically the same size and coloring as the missing Kitty, turns up in a gravel pit on Blackheath not far from Shooter's Hill. Is it Kitty Ryder? And where has the body been befoe it was left in the gravel pit? As Pitt continues to ask questions, he uncovers slight inconsistencies in Kynaston's story. Are these harmless omissions or simple coincidences, or could they be more sinister evidence that implicates Kynaston in treason?

Pitt knows he cannot afford to make an accusation that he cannot prove. In his job, his successes will all be secret but his failures will be appallingly public. 

An Old Betrayal by Charles Finch

An Old Betrayl: A Charles Lenox Mystery by Charles Finch --- 294 pages

The seventh volume in Finch's series of Victorian mysteries featuring Charles Lenox.

It is early spring 1875 and Charles Lenox gladly plays hookey from his hectic schedule as a member of Parliament and Junior Lord of the Treasury to oblige an old friend. Lord John Dallington is following in Charles' unconventional footsteps as a private inquiry agent; Lord John is unwell and Charles agrees to meet with a new client on his behalf in the restaurant at Charing Cross Station.

Because of a a series of assumptions that prove to be incorrent, Lenox does not recognize the client until too late, but has an abrupt encounter with a man calling himself Archibald Godwin, whose arrival caused Dallington's mysterious client to flee. A few days later, Lenox and Dallington are summoned by the police when Archibald Godwin is found murdered in a respectable London hotel. But the murdered man in the hotel is not the man Lenox met in the restaurant.

Then the victim's sister arrives and reveals that her brother came to town in pursuit of an imposter who was using his name and credit to commit fraud. It seems that the man Lenox encountered at Charing Cross was actually the imposter, and the police find evidence that seems to suggest this imposter murdered the real Archibald Godwin.

But what is the connection between Archibald Godwin, a quiet country squire, the imposter, and Dallington's erstwhile client, who, Lenox discovers, is one of Queen Victoria's social secretaries at Buckingham Palace. Soon Lenox begins to suspect that this murder is just one part of a much larger and very dangerous conspiracy. Somone has been nursing a grudge for a very long time and is about to take his revenge.

Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger

Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger, 307 pages
Finishing School Series - Book the First

I absolutely loved the author's Parasol Protectorate series and knew this new series would be awesome. I was not disappointed. The author's wit and talent shines through yet again. Young teen Sophriana is not even close to what any female in her family would call "finished". When a family friend recommends Sophriana be sent to a finishing school, Sophriana's mother immediately complies. But Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy For Young Ladies of Quality is not like any other school for young ladies. Along with learning to curtsy, exercise proper tea etiquette and how to carry a fan, you also learn how to poison, steal, kill, divert and fight. Sophrian is quick to embrace her new life and makes friends and enemy alike at the boarding school. Toss in flywaymen (like highwaymen but in the air), a missing prototype, mystery and the sinister picklemen, and you have a great story. Looking forward to reading the rest in the series.

Rustication by Charles Palliser

Rustication: A Novel by Charles Palliser --- 323 pages

Ron Charles, reviewing Palliser's latest Victorian thriller in the Washington Post (Click HERE to read the full review) sums it up pithily:

"Getting suspended from college is a bummer. Coming home to find your mom and sister have moved into The House of Usher is worse."

Palliser's specialty is the Victorian era with all of its repressed sexuality, rigid class distinctions and morbid fascination with violence. The tale is told through the journal entries of seventeen-year-old Richard Shenstone, who has been sent down --- rusticated --- in disgrace by his college in Cambridge for reasons he would prefer not to admit to his mother and sister. They too have been "rusticated" --- driven from their home and deprived of their respectable position and income by the disgrace and death of their clergyman husband and father. They have taken refuge in a dilapidated old house on the edge of a marsh near a small village not far from their former abode in Thurchester, which Richard's mother says she inherited from her own father. But one thing soon becomes clear amongst all the complexities of this story, and that is that nothing is as it seems and no one is telling the whole truth, not in Richard's family, not amongst the other inhabitants of the village, not in Cambridge and not in Thurchester.Atmospheric and absorbing, this is the kind of story that will keep you up reading half the night, with all the lights on.

Charles Palliser was born in the U.S. but has lived in the U.K. since he was three years old. He holds dual American and Irish citizenship. A graduate of Oxford University, he lives in London and writes full-time. Rustication is his fifth published novel.

Watch this Youtube REVIEW of Rustication by British author Michael Johnston

Blind Justice by Anne Perry

Blind Justice: A William Monk Novel by Anne Perry --- 338 pages

Another great installment in Perry's William Monk series, a tense courtroom drama set amidst the opulance and squalor of midnineteenth century London, where corruption seethes beneath the surface of Victorian propriety.

Hester and Monk undertake to unmask a charismatic preacher who they suspect is milking his gullible congregation for donations to help the needy that are actually going to fund a lavish lifestyle for himself and his family.

They are happy to know that their friend, Sir Oliver Rathbone, newly appointed to the bench, will be presiding at the trial of the Reverand Abel Taft. The prosecution makes a convincing case using the evidence Hester and Monk have collected, but then the defense presents a witness, Robertson Drew, a close associate of Taft's, who sedulously undermines Hester's credibility and the integrity of Taft's victims. Sir Oliver, watching this perversion of justice unfold in his courtroom, rashly decides to intervene. The results are so disastrous they could destroy his career and threaten his life.

Check out this video teaser for Blind Justice: