Rating: 
Summary: Tedious
Review: A slender plot is bloated by Perry's incessant and repetitive psychologizing. An editor should have restricted to two (three at the absolute outside!) iterations of: Monk's frustration about his lost antecedents; the tensions between Monk and Runcorn; Hester's brave-but-vulnerable background; Callandra's brave-but-veiled feelings for Kristian; the flame-like fascination Elyssa exerts; Kristian's heroic idealism; the characterologic impossibility of Kristian killing an innocent bystander; etc, etc. When the denouement finally arrives, it is unprepared, implausible and distasteful.
Rating:
Summary: Tedious
Review: A slender plot is bloated by Perry's incessant and repetitive psychologizing. An editor should have restricted to two (three at the absolute outside!) iterations of: Monk's frustration about his lost antecedents; the tensions between Monk and Runcorn; Hester's brave-but-vulnerable background; Callandra's brave-but-veiled feelings for Kristian; the flame-like fascination Elyssa exerts; Kristian's heroic idealism; the characterologic impossibility of Kristian killing an innocent bystander; etc, etc. When the denouement finally arrives, it is unprepared, implausible and distasteful.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Victorian Mystery!
Review: Anne Perry is a top-notch writer of mystery and has her victorian facts down pat! I generally do not like mysteries, but since the first book that I read by Ms.Perry, I have read ALL of her books!If you want a good read and mystery right to the last page, then this is the book for you!
Rating: 
Summary: Still a Perry fan
Review: Any story that starts with a giant hairball and ends with hearsay masquerading as testimony is bound to have some entertainment value. Nevermind that the solution to the mystery has no relationship to the clues that have gone before. I still get a kick out of the Victorian ambiance of Perry's books and can't help being curious about Monk's past as it slowly starts to come into focus.
Rating: 
Summary: A great disappointment
Review: As an avowed Anne Perry fan, I was thoroughly bored with this book. First, the theme of the book is repetitive. Perry repeats herself in describing the characters' backgrounds in bok after book. In this one, the descriptions wore thin so Perry fans might find this tedious. Second, the beginning of the book begins with an error in editing or in sloppy writing. A question asked of a character and answered gets repeated by another as if he had not been in the previous scene. Very sloppy. Third, the author's anti-catholic stab adds little to the main story and seems gratuitous. Blaming the catholic Church for everything seems to be in vogue among certain circles nowadays but here it had nothing to contribute to the story line. Skip this book. Get an earlier MONK novel from Perry and enjoy it instead.
Rating:
Summary: Funeral in Blue - Yahoo! Yahoo! Perry fan returns.
Review: Buy this book. The purpose of this review is not to tell the plot but rather to assure Perry fans that her "Funeral in Blue" is a fine piece of storytelling. If you are a William Monk fan, you will enjoy this book especially if you are more interested in puzzles than Perry-philosophy. "Funeral in Blue" has a better balance between storytelling and philosophy than most of the recent Monk novels. If you liked "The Face of a Stranger," you will be relieved to read "Funeral in Blue" because it seemed that the recent Monk novels focused more on the "other" characters than Monk and his wife Hester; this book returns its focus to its namesake. I rated the book like this: Two stars for Ms. Perry returning her focus to Mr. and Mrs. Monk; two stars for Ms. Perry departing, thank goodness, from her usual sordid murder to a crime less gruesome than is her wont; and two stars for the mystery itself. I know that two plus two plus two is six stars, but this mystery novel rated an additional star. Because Ms. Perry has become somewhat predictable, I had a pretty good idea who the culprit would be (and I was correct), but I have to admit that she did a good job of trying to make me change my mind several times. Give Ms. Perry an A+ for this addition to her Monk series. Once I picked up "Funeral in Blue," I had to read it all the way through. If you like Perry, this one is worth buying.
Rating: 
Summary: Funeral in Blue -- Nice Try
Review: Coming directly on the heels of the maddeningly bad "Slaves of Obsession," "Funeral in Blue" does a little something to improve Anne Perry's much-damaged reputation. The former book was so poor it was impossible to imagine that she was really paying attention while writing it. This new book offers some promise that Ms. Perry is working harder at her usually excellent series of Victorian mysteries. While a trifle sloppy in plot and in need of some firm editing, "Funeral in Blue" does further develop the (somewhat annoying) characters of Hester and William Monk, and I liked the fact that the entire ending leaves so many loose ends and a promise of further exploration of Monk's lost past. Perhaps Ms. Perry would be better off writing more slowly and carefully, if only to reach the heights she has obtained in the past.
Rating:
Summary: Certainly Not My Favourite Monk
Review: I am a huge William Monk and Hester fan. I've always liked that series better than the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series because the storylines are a bit darker and the characters more complex, but I didn't enjoy this book as much as the others in the series. I found that it had trouble maintaining my interest. I found it long and drawn out, with a very simple plot and storyline. I did enjoy seeing a more human side to Monk. He is my favourite character after all, and previous books have really not concentrated on him much. I found when we got to the denouement that the murderer and the way the crime occurred was a bit of a stretch--how did we get to that murderer and that scenario? Unbelievable and far-fetched. I will still continue with the series because I want to see what happens with Monk and his getting to know more of his past, but I hope the next installment is more exciting.
Rating:
Summary: Good Characters, Mystery Meh...
Review: I give the five stars for the exploration of the minds and hearts that Ms. Perry writes in Funeral in Blue. It's impressive that after more than a decade of writing these same characters, she always finds something else to bring to the light and explore, and thank God, nothing melodramatic like the things the mediocre writers resort to. We don't find out that Monk is the lost Duke of York, kidnapped at birth to replace a son lost to a Northumbrian fisherman and his wife. :-) The characters skillfully have more brushstrokes painted within the outlines Anne Perry had written in books past, giving us more color and insight into them. I'm glad to see Monk taking up the quest for his past again--he seemed to have dropped the idea after "The Silent Cry", which somewhat annoyed me. Hester and Monk appear to be settling into their relationship with more ease, but they haven't become complacent--there are still flashes of the sharp tongues we know they both possess. They have their roles at home worked out, and they're blessedly atypical, fitting those two perfectly. Let's see. The mystery left me a little bit unsatisfied. I think this was more a character development novel of Perry's, rather than more mystery-oriented such as "Defend and Betray". For the most part, Perry seems to go for one or the other--rarely do we have lots of chracter development packaged tidily with a great mystery. I've learned to accept that, and thus enjoy each Monk book. Predictably, the books since Monk and Hester's marriage have been more character oriented, and "Funeral" was no exception. I expected that, but the ending sort of came out of nowhere...that jarred me a bit. I somewhat expected the murderer to be who it turned out to be, but the ending seemed a bit quick and left me scratching my head in confusion. Anyhow--I expected a character-development novel and got much more than I thought. So I can honestly give this book five stars--I think Ms. Perry looks more to develop her characters than to write the perfect mystery anyhow. Good entry in the series, and that's my two pence!
Rating:
Summary: Return to Prominence
Review: I have always really enjoyed this series, because of the intensity of the stories and the characters. I had, however, seen a bit of slippage in the last few entries, but Funeral is definitely back in the suspenseful and excellent tradition of the earlier books. The key to any Perry book is really not the mystery so much as the cause she tackles and the dynamic interplay between Monk, Hester and whichever supporting players are being accentuated in the book at issue. However, even the mystery here was quite good, although, as one of the editorial reviewers pointed out, the solution does sort of come out of left field. But given the truly strong personal interplay between the characters, who cares. I hope, however, that the absence of Rathbone from this book is not going to be a trend, because I think his character is necessary for all the angst which made this series great to be revisited.
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