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saraintexas's review against another edition
4.0
It took me a long time to finish this book but finish it I did and it was good. Anne Perry is a little heavy on the social injustice of the Victorian Era but if you can make it past that I highly recommend this series of books.
vdyej's review against another edition
2.0
Soooo tedious and action-deficient. Not what I've come to expect from an Anne Perry mystery.
raehink's review against another edition
4.0
The second William Monk mystery. His amnesia is no better than before and he must continue to solve cases without any knowledge of his former police informants. In this story, he must enter the upper class world of the aristocratic Moidore family, whose daughter has been brutally stabbed and killed in her own bed. Monk knows that someone in the family committed the crime, but can he expose them?
margaretpinard's review against another edition
3.0
I really liked the first of this series (Face of a Stranger), but this one echoed a lot of the same points without tugging at my sympathy strings. Yes there were some interesting twists and turns of the plot, and emotional highs, but I would say it's not as good as the first one. I did like the way the author added in real-life, historical bits though- a very nuanced, non-intrusive way of explaining different customs that Victorians of 1853 would have taken for granted.
ibeforem's review against another edition
4.0
William Monk is an unusual character. Because he doesn’t know anything about his own background, the reader has nothing to pull from to understand his motivations. For instance, why does he hate his boss so much? Is it just because he rubs him the wrong way, or is there a history that even Monk doesn’t know, but that he can’t stop himself from reacting to? It’s frustrating and intriguing all at once.
But there’s more to this book than the mystery of Monk. Hester continues to excel at being the female lead, and I find their relationship very interesting. Is it strictly platonic, or are their hints of romantic feelings hiding beneath the ire they tend to display? Hester is obviously in search of a life that is larger than the one society would like to dictate, and Monk appears to be her ticket to that life.
As for the murder mystery, it swims in the stink of class bigotry. I think Perry did a good job illustrating the feelings of both the aristocracy and the servant classes.
The one issue I had with this book had more to do with how I was reading it than anything else. I was reading it on my phone, and it was my “emergency” read, so I only got to it once or twice a week. Because of that, I had a hard time remembering who was who in the Moidore family. Though in my defense, there were a lot of them. This also wasn’t a quick moving plot. There’s really not a lot of action.
Bottom line, if you enjoy a period mystery, it’s hard to go wrong with Anne Perry.
But there’s more to this book than the mystery of Monk. Hester continues to excel at being the female lead, and I find their relationship very interesting. Is it strictly platonic, or are their hints of romantic feelings hiding beneath the ire they tend to display? Hester is obviously in search of a life that is larger than the one society would like to dictate, and Monk appears to be her ticket to that life.
As for the murder mystery, it swims in the stink of class bigotry. I think Perry did a good job illustrating the feelings of both the aristocracy and the servant classes.
The one issue I had with this book had more to do with how I was reading it than anything else. I was reading it on my phone, and it was my “emergency” read, so I only got to it once or twice a week. Because of that, I had a hard time remembering who was who in the Moidore family. Though in my defense, there were a lot of them. This also wasn’t a quick moving plot. There’s really not a lot of action.
Bottom line, if you enjoy a period mystery, it’s hard to go wrong with Anne Perry.
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