Krishna
Yes, the Victorian details are there, the Anne Perry imprimateur is also present, in describing the involvement of Thomas Pitt, his compassion, Charlotte and Aunt Vespasia’s detective work to help unravel the personal details of the people connected with murder. (Emily, Charlotte’s sister, is away in Paris and elsewhere on her honeymoon). And yet, the result is unsatisfactory.
Thomas is called in to investigate the murder of an MP in a brazen manner. His throat was slashed as he walked home from a late sitting of the Parliament, and that too on a bridge – a public place – and he was propped up tied to a lamp post with his own scarf! He is Sir Lockwood Hamilton and there was a wife and an adopted son, whose animosity with each other was interesting. Before Pitt could make headway, there is another MP killed in exactly the same way, Sir
Vivyan Etheridge, and the case takes a bizarre turn. Is it now a political crime? (The two had identical views – against giving women the right to vote – but so had most MPs). Anarchists were also suspected. (Which is by the way, historically correct. Anarchists were the feared terrorists of the turn of the last century and before, equivalent, though less able to cause so much mayhem, to the religious terrorists we find everywhere today).
Etheridge had caused deep offense by helping take away Florence Ivory’s daughter based on the accusations of her husband of Florence being an incompetent mother. Also, the son in law of Etheridge, James Carfax, was waiting for his death so that the considerable money he possessed could pass into the hands of the pliant and adoring wife of his, Helen Carfax. Could it be a personal vandetta after all, the first murder being a mistake, or worse, an attempt to hide this one in the manner of ABC murders (Agatha Christie’s brilliant novel)?
Before they can unravel it, yet another MP is murdered in the same manner and the case looks hopeless…
Of course in the end they unravel it, but the disappointment is in the fact that there are no clues upfront as to who could be the culprit, and it is almost on the lines of ‘Oh, by the way, the Butler did it!’. It is unsatisfactory, especially from an author who has made whodunits her genre.
For this reason alone, if nothing else, it deserves only a 3/10
— Krishna