Rating: 
Summary: A most thrilling and emotional novel for the mystery fan
Review: This book is a must read for those who love unexpected outcomes of the book!! I was assigned to read this for school, but I thoroughly enjoyed it to its fullest! The setting and language used make it a whole different society from today's world. It is an escape from our world, and sets the reader in a world of courtesy, rumors, elegant charm, riches, and scandal, which describe the Victorian England setting. Perry portrays her thoughts and ideas through masterful writing skills which draw the reader right into to the novel, just as if the reader was part of the gallery for Mellville's trial. It is hard to put down, and each chapter does not focus on one character, but portrays the lives of different characters with different occupations and lifestyles. It is also a book that makes you think of the tactics that each character might try next, in order to succeed. So relax, fix yourself a cup of tea, and enjoy your reading time as you travel far back into Victorian England for a story that is riveting and stirring to the emotions, while giving you a good feeling for the 'good guy'!
Rating: 
Summary: Good Victorian Novel, Mediocre Mystery
Review: This is the first "Monk" mystery-novel I've read, and if I return to them it will be as novels. The psychological introspection of the two main characters is harrowing. The confining social atmosphere is terrifically realized, although Monk and Rathbone are perhaps too modern in their PC attitudes. The author so convincingly evokes Victorian conventional morality that neither I nor the blinkered protagonists ever guessed the surprise that is so appropriately at the core of this novel. In an artfully constructed plot, the "real" mystery arrives late in a rather tedious trial, when least expected. This is a memorable novel of interior mystery rather than action. I would have understood the characters' romancing more if I had started earlier in the series. If there's a flaw in the book, it may be an excess of feeling, of emotional flagellation--particularly in comparison to Bruce Alexander's similar Sir John Fielding series--and what seems a criminal dearth of legal preparation on the part of Rathbone (or is that typical of Vic. lawyers, Ms. Perry?). The agonizing sleuthing actually wins too easily, then romance triumphs, and the book ends with no satisfyingly clever resolution. Maybe Perry couldn't figure out proof of the villain's legal culpability? (Did anyone else think the architecture of Melville was modelled on Frank Lloyd Wright's? I actually thought Perry might have Melville escape to America and somehow, ah, influence his mother!)
Rating:
Summary: A Breach of Promise
Review: This latest in Perry's series about Monk and Hester Latterly continues the personal thread of their relationship along with a tantalizing mystery so well set in Victorian England that you can feel and smell the story! Go back and read every one of the books in this series!
Rating:
Summary: One of Perry's best
Review: _A Breach of Promise_ is like a breath of fresh air in the William Monk series by Anne Perry. I have read all of her Victorian mysteries and had been rather disapponted by _The Silent Cry_, the immediately preceding book, thinking that perhaps Miss Perry had mined out her mid-Victorian setting and that we would not have any more excellent books such as the first book in the series, _The Face of a Stranger_. I was totally wrong. This book is fantastic. The premise of a breach of promise suit didn't seem to be all that interesting before I opened the book, but Perry captures the emotions and the fears and the lives of the characters wonderfully, including some secondary characters, a Lt. Gabriel Sheldon and his wife, Perdita, who have their own problems which play against the main plot in a masterful manner. I recommend this book to any of Perry's fans and say that you won't be disappointed.
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