Search - Funeral in Blue (William Monk, Bk 12)

Great mystery - at one point I thought I might have figured it out and then new information made me go in another direction. I couldn't put it down once I started.

When Alisa Beck turns up dead along with an artist's model, Monk and Hester get involved since Alisa's husband, Christian is a family friend. The evidence is light and mostly circumstantial but the law arrests Christian anyway. Monk is determined to find evidence that Christian is not guilty of this heinous crime. I was enjoying the story until this point. Then it morphs into a history lesson which has zero impact on the story. Monk is trying to prove that something (or someone) from 13 years ago during the Vienna uprising had something to do with Alisa's death. He is proving that she was a very courageous and heroic person. This search took a lot of time and I just couldn't see what the information had to do with Christian's defense or Alisa's murder for that matter.

The ending was rather surprising and totally unexpected but rushed as if the author was only supposed to write a certain number of pages and she ran out of room. All in all an ok story but not the best I've read by any means.

Funeral in Blue, like all of Perry's Monk books, has interesting characters and plot twists and immerses the reader in the millieu of mid-nineteenth century London. I really enjoy these books.

Two beautiful women have been found strangled in the studio of a well-known London artist. To investigator WIlliam Mon, and his wife Hester, the murders are a nightmare. One of the victims is the wife of Hester's cherished cooeague, surgeon Dr. Kristian Beck. This is one of Perry's best.