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A review by suflet
The Cater Street Hangman by Anne Perry
2.0
In terms of subjective enjoyment, this book was pretty decent. Although the romance was a bit vague for modern standards, it kind of makes sense given that it was written in the 70s (not in the 2010s as Amazon would have me believe. I assume that date applies to the digital republication). Nevertheless, the romance was sweet. The mystery was interesting and kept me guessing. I would say that I was a little disappointed that Charlotte, the main character, does not actually do very much investigating but then neither does Inspector Pitt (at least not on the page, he did lots of investigating off the page) so what I realized was that it's just not an "investigative mystery" type of story. I enjoyed it.
I do have one major beef (cw: homophobia), which is profoundly spoilery so if you don't wish to read it, go no further:
The serial killer kills because she's a deeply repressed lesbian who hates that she's attracted to the girls she's attracted to and so murders them. Granted, this was only revealed on the last page or so, so it didn't spoil too much of the book for me, because I assure you I would have DNFed at that point if it had come earlier. Is a story with a queer villain automatically homophobic or transphobic? Not in my opinion. I'm queer and consume a lot of queer media and have loved a number of amazing queer villains. If the serial killer had not been the only queer person in the book, that would have been better. The book had a strong theme of "we are products of our circumstances so we should empathize with criminals" which could have made for a "society was so cruel and homophobic to her it drove her to murder" story but instead it's implied that she became murderous as a product of lacking love from her husband, presumably because 1) he's a man and 2) he's a terrible guy.
So if you're queer and want to avoid period-typical (1970s) homophobia which goes unacknowledged in the story, maybe skip this one. If, like me, it won't ruin the story for you but just leave a bad taste in your mouth, go for it.
I do have one major beef (cw: homophobia), which is profoundly spoilery so if you don't wish to read it, go no further:
The serial killer kills because she's a deeply repressed lesbian who hates that she's attracted to the girls she's attracted to and so murders them. Granted, this was only revealed on the last page or so, so it didn't spoil too much of the book for me, because I assure you I would have DNFed at that point if it had come earlier. Is a story with a queer villain automatically homophobic or transphobic? Not in my opinion. I'm queer and consume a lot of queer media and have loved a number of amazing queer villains. If the serial killer had not been the only queer person in the book, that would have been better. The book had a strong theme of "we are products of our circumstances so we should empathize with criminals" which could have made for a "society was so cruel and homophobic to her it drove her to murder" story but instead it's implied that she became murderous as a product of lacking love from her husband, presumably because 1) he's a man and 2) he's a terrible guy.
So if you're queer and want to avoid period-typical (1970s) homophobia which goes unacknowledged in the story, maybe skip this one. If, like me, it won't ruin the story for you but just leave a bad taste in your mouth, go for it.