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DEATH ON BLACKHEATH
by Anne Perry
Ballantine, March 2014
320 pages
$27.00
ISBN: 0345548388


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Anne Perry has written another installment in her series starring Thomas and Charlotte Pitt. Thomas is now head of Special Branch, charged with protecting England from traitors and spies. However, as DEATH ON BLACKHEATH opens, he is called to a crime scene that may in fact be just a police matter. A mutilated woman's body has been found in a gravel pit. The reason for Pitt's involvement is that the murder may be linked to the household of an important scientist, Dudley Kynaston, whose home is nearby and whose maid has gone missing.

Pitt is highly qualified for his position, but he must negotiate with people in society who look down on him because he was not born into the upper classes. This makes his investigation even more challenging. As the narrative unfolds, familiar characters return, including Thomas' wife Charlotte, her sister Emily, Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould, Victor Narraway, formerly head of Special Branch, and Thomas' assistant, Stoker. They all join him in trying to find out what mystery is being hidden in the Kynaston household. Kynaston has lied to Pitt about his whereabouts, and his confession that he is hiding a love affair does not account for all the facts. Another member of his household, the widow of his idolized brother, is an enigmatic figure, and Kynaston's wife seems quite unhappy. Emily is also unhappy, believing that her dashing husband Jack Radley has fallen out of love with her. She feels this way because Jack is not willing to discuss his job offer with her. He has been offered a job working with Kynaston and is wary of taking it unless he knows what is going on with the scientist.

Although this latest entry in the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series contains all the elements of Anne Perry's other novels about this pair, this book seems hastily put together and disjointed. As expected and anticipated, the details of Victorian life and the relationships proscribed by society are described with delicious detail. However, there are two basic problems with the book. The story line veers in a wholly new direction half way through, and much of what would make the story work for the reader relies on references to people and relationships that we may not remember quite as well as the people named above. Authors often have to fill in details from the past, and some add too much, so that the returning reader becomes burdened with the information that she already knows. However, Perry does the opposite here and does not fully explain one particularly important character and what happened in another tale that impacts on the present one. Since the resolution of the mystery relies on this information, not knowing or fully understanding it leaves the reader in limbo. Also, Perry relies too much on long conversations between the characters and less on the action that would make this novel, like so many of her others, come to life. This book may have been disappointing in certain respects, but Thomas and Charlotte Pitt are always fun to be with and we await further adventures in the series.

§ Anne Corey is a writer, poet, teacher and botanical artist in New York's Hudson Valley.

Reviewed by Anne Corey, April 2014

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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