Sheila C. reviewed on 11/29/2005 + 8 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 1

This mystery set in 1840's London, is another highly readable inspector Thomas Pitt and his well-born wife, Charlotte myetery. It is one of Perry's scathing portraits of Victorian society balanced with a mystery revolving human desires, shameful secrets and the Victorian hyprocrisy that allowed for secret double lives, several of which could only be maintained by blackmail. It is bad enough that the recently deceased Lord Fitzroy-Hammond has been removed from his grave, but when it happens a second time and then other buried corpses start popping up, the normally unflappable Pitt is puzzled indeed. Is the perpetrator trying to hide a murder or call attention to one? The answer lies in a convoluted but perfectly logical merging of art, blackmail, politics, pornography, and prostitution. Doggedly following the evidence, inspector Pitt solves the murders, in the process of which we learn both the dark and compassionate side of Victorian society.

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