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SEVEN DIALS
by Anne Perry
Ballantine, February 2003
345 pages
$25.95
ISBN: 0345440072


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Thomas Pitt is no longer a member of the police force at Bow Street, but instead is in the Special Branch. Victor Narraway, the head of the Secret Service and Pittıs new boss, orders him to come to his office immediately. A minor diplomat, Edwin Lovat, had been murdered in the garden of the Egyptian mistress of a senior cabinet minister at 3:00 a.m. in the morning. The mistress, Ayesha Zakhari, was discovered trying to cart the body away in a wheel barrel and immediately after the police find her, the senior minister, Ryerson, appears.

The problem is cotton. Egypt produces most of the raw cotton that feeds the machines in Manchester and other British industrial cities. Workers in the cotton factories are threatening to strike unless they make more money and Egyptians, acutely aware of their countryıs status as a protectorate of Great Britain, believe they should receive more for their cotton. Ryerson is the only man who can possibly negotiate a settlement acceptable to both sides. But if he is arrested, his value will vanish.

Meanwhile, in the parallel plot, Gracie, the Pittıs servant, learns that her good friend Tilda is very worried about her brother Martin Garve who is missing. They are orphans and she knows he would not go away without telling her. Charlotte agrees to help Gracie find out what has happened to him and that takes her to the most notorious infamous area of London, the Seven Dials, in search of answers.

As always the history is brilliant. The depiction of England in the last years of the nineteenth century, the self-assured men of wealth, the poor who seem to be invisible most of the time, the pounding of the machines in the factories, the ³at homes² and parties just so that women can wear the most current fashions, all of these come alive for the reader and we can understand the complexity, the contrasts, the disparities of the most powerful country in the world at that time. We can also see the cracks in that authority that will destroy much of it eventually.

Pitt is sent to Alexandria, Egypt, on his quest and we see that teeming, alien, exotic city through his eyes. The colors, the sounds, the smells all assault him and yet he falls in love with Egypt. He learns very quickly that the English are not at all popular there and that resentment and anger are seething just beneath the surface.

The plots are intriguing, although both all the characters spend more time agonizing over what is happening than they do finding answers. There is a major plot device which Pitt discovers in Egypt but does nothing about until nearly the end of the novel and I thought it was quite obvious and he should have seen it. The ending, as is so often true in these novels, seemed rushed to me and the final solution was not entirely satisfying.

The book is filled with angst, with self-doubt, with self-absorption even at time. Everyone is keeping secrets and brooding over them. If that were all there was in Perryıs books, I would quit reading them. But the history and the sense of place is so marvelous that I try to get by that ponderous feeling of emotion and enjoy visiting England and, this time, Egypt, and watching Charlotte and Pitt and their family grow and change. And one very good thing; the Inner Circle is mentioned briefly at the beginning and then we have nothing more to do with it. I really wish Perry would lose that plot device entirely.

Reviewed by Sally A. Fellows, April 2003

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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