In Perry’s latest Daniel Pitt mystery, the young barrister and his friends grapple with a serial killer terrorizing London.
It’s a cold, wet February in 1912 London, and the forecast calls for murder. A thorny assault case has landed on Daniel’s desk, and the second casualty of the so-called Rainy-day Slasher is now in the morgue being examined by Daniel’s friend Dr. Miriam fford Croft, a newly minted pathologist. Lena Madden, the second victim, like the first, Sandrine Bernard, was in her 20s. Like Sandrine, Lena was viciously stabbed, and part of her index finger on her dominant hand was severed. Soon, a third body, that of middle-aged banker Roger Haviland, is found, similarly mutilated. All the crimes occurred during blinding rain, in late afternoon or evening darkness. The police, spearheaded by Daniel’s fellow Cambridge alum Inspector Ian Frobisher, focus their investigation on what, if anything, connected the three in life. Much prevarication ensues as Frobisher and his ad hoc team of Miriam; her boss, Dr. Evelyn Hall; and Daniel mull over whether or not the murders could have been random, committed by more than one person, copycat crimes, etc. The only commonality that emerges, in an information deficit seemingly intended to enhance suspense, is that each victim had been, at one time or another, a Cambridge student. Two were acquainted with suburban vicar Richard Rhodes and his wife, Polly, who also have Cambridge ties. An apparent red herring is Daniel’s new case defending Cambridge history professor Nicholas Wolford, who, in a scuffle over a groundless accusation of plagiarism, broke his accuser’s nose and jaw. Much backstory about Miriam’s and Dr. Eve’s struggles to succeed in a field closed to women, and many interviews among and between the above characters, warmed by those English creature comforts of tea, shortbread, and coal fires, drain tension from the story until the hurried and minimally foreshadowed close.
Appealing mainly for well-rounded characters, not plot.Pub Date: April 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-35873-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
Categories: HISTORICAL MYSTERY | HISTORICAL FICTION | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Against a backdrop of upper-class Victorian life, a quiet young woman turns out to be a talented sleuth.
A second collaboration between the Duchess of York and historical romance writer Marguerite Kaye focuses on the younger sister of their original creation, again a real person about whom very little is known. The book proceeds in a series of episodes set between 1872 and 1877, over which time the romance between Lady Mary Montagu Douglas Scott, age 21 at the outset, and one Col. Walter Trefusis, is sparked and proceeds to its real-life outcome. This time out, the imaginary nature of these episodes seems more noticeable. The plot hinges on Lady Mary's unusual ability to sense the character and thoughts of others, enabling her to solve domestic mysteries of one sort and another. The most well-developed and believable of these incidents is the first, in which Lady Mary, with Col. Trefusis' support, finds a noblewoman's missing brooch, presumed stolen. Though Trefusis and she clearly begin to fall in love, stubborn obstacles in their own personalities will (of course) keep them apart. A woman as out of kilter with the conventions of her time as was her older sister, Mary is determined to avoid matrimony in any case. "Can't you understand, Mama? I don't want to be a dutiful wife. I don't want to have to love, honour and obey a husband at any price. I don't wish to be an—an appendage to my husband. I want to be something more than simply a wife." She will get her chance. In a final incident, Lady Mary gets theatrical training and goes undercover to solve a theft of documents of national importance lost by her friend the colonel in the course of his mysterious employment. This giddy episode includes some fun moments with a Victorian girl gang and its scar-faced, carrot-topped leader, Queenie Divers.
Richly evokes the estates, house parties, and diversions of the Victorian period.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063216822
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023
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BOOK REVIEW
Three generations of women struggle against the bounds of patriarchy in this debut novel.
Over the course of centuries, the Weyward women of Crows Beck in Cumbria, England, have shared a common gift: the ability to connect deeply with and seemingly communicate with nature, particularly animals. But they are also all victimized and controlled by men in a variety of ways. In 1619, healer Altha is put on trial for witchcraft after having been seen near a field where a farmer is trampled by his cows and because her own mother was suspected of being a witch due to her involvement in treating people in the village. Hundreds of years later, in the early 1940s, Violet Ayres chafes against the heavy-handed scrutiny and control of her father and struggles to learn more about her mother, Elizabeth Weyward, who died under mysterious circumstances when Violet was young. In the present day, Kate Ayres has fled her abusive live-in boyfriend before he can discover that she’s pregnant, taking refuge in her great-aunt Violet’s cottage as she attempts to rebuild her life and protect herself and her baby. Although the women's connection to nature at times feels like an unneeded dose of the supernatural in this already gripping novel, the ways in which they are subjected to the whims and cruelties of male dominance are chilling and realistic. Readers probably won't be especially surprised by some of the twists of the story, but this is nonetheless an engaging novel that captures the ways patriarchy has sought to limit women for all of history and the ways women have found to carve out freedom for themselves.
Thoughtful and at times harrowing, this novel is a successful blend of historical fiction and modern feminism.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781250280800
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023
Categories: HISTORICAL FICTION | LITERARY FICTION | GENERAL FICTION
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