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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!
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Summary: Couldn't put it down
Review: I was up 'till 3am to finish it. The coincidences were a little much, but the suspense was grand. I think it was Perry's best yet (and I've read 'em all).
Rating: 
Summary: Somewhat slow, but not bad.
Review: This isn't usually my type of mystery book, however I found the view of Victorian England interesting. Of course, not knowing much about Victorian England I'm taking a lot of what Miss Perry says on faith. I did find myself skipping over portions of exposition when I found the going a little slow. The revelation about two-thirds through the book was well done. I found the last third as an anti-climax. Will I read another one of these? Probably not, but never say never.
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Summary: a rockin' victorian-period mystery
Review: I'm not normally much of a mystery fan, but I loved this one. Lots of fun twists and turns. My only criticism would be that the sympathetic characters come off as mouthpieces for modern-day let-it-all-hang-out multiculturalism and liberalism. Turn-of-the-century England had real reformers and radicals, whose viewpoints were not much like the ones that Perry puts in their mouths.
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Summary: Fascinating
Review: From a historical point of view, from a woman's point of view this was an excellent book. I was disapointed at the way it ended but it was very good reading none the less.
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Summary: So what's a girl to do?
Review: I find it hard to credit that someone could fall in love with someone without knowing even the most basic thing about them. And I find it even less creditable that a person could become engaged to someone without noticing it. And, finally, how could one so reportedly gifted be so persistently unobservant and obstinant in defending a suit of this kind. But, having said all that, I have to say that I enjoyed this book. I kept wondering when, and if there would be a murder, and who the victim would be, even though I figured out the subplot before it was announced. I wish that Perry had not ended the whole thing quite so abruptly. I have a considerable fondness for Rathbone, and wonder why Hester is not more attracted to him. Perhaps his thoughtfulness and male sensitivity are a bit too modern for our thoroughly liberated Victorian heroine. Hester appears to prefer the rough masculine good(if somewhat insensitive)intentions of Inspector Monk. I like this trio of investigators. Hope Perry doesn't break them up.
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Summary: Great reading
Review: I enjoyed this book. The english touch is what I look for in a good mystery with the real fact of the period. Reminds me of an author Victora Holt.
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Summary: Keeps you going even when you've figured it out. Good read!
Review: One reads on about the peculiar social strictures of 19th Century Victorian England, and wonders how the race survived. God Bless all those feisty women. This one keeps you going for quite a while just trying to guess who the victim will be. While I had much of it figured out, I didn't anticipate either the victim or the rationale. This was a really fun read.
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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!)
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Summary: Usual Anne Perry Fare: Victoriana viewed from the 1990's
Review: I have read and enjoyed all of Anne Perry's books, but certainly not for the mystery plot - the solution is always contrived (here, the murderer left too much to chance, in "Cain His Brother" the main character would have had to be an acrobat and have the gift of teletransportation to have done what he was supposed to in the time he was supposed to have done it), and there are holes you can drive an hansom through. I think that's because Ms. Perry's main goal is putting across her views on the social and gender inequalities in English society in the Victorian age. I totally agree with her feminist and liberal views, so I go on reading her books, but she could really make a greater effort in consistency. Here, as in "Weighed in the Balance", the coincidence of having Hester Latterly working in a place where someone is connected to the main mystery is just too much. The main plot was quite sufficient to make her point - though I guessed what was Melville's real problem before I was a third of the way into the book - having the link between the plot and subplot was contrived and unnecessary. And I agree with the other readers who think the ending was much too abrupt. Also, it's very 1990's and American (yes, I know she comes from New Zealand, same difference) to have the characters call each other by their first names, specially a nurse in someone's employ does not call her employers by name or, talking to a child, refer to his parents by first name. Did Jane Austen ever let us know what Mr. and Mrs. Bennet's, or Mrs. Dashwood's, first names were? It bothers me in that it does not give the right formal atmosphere of social conversation of the time. I was glad to see that Ms. Perry seems to have outgrown her love of the verb "to obey" and all its form (obedience, obediently, etc.). She only uses it about ten times in this book - albeit sometimes inappropriately, as when Monk "obediently" follows a servant taking him in to see the master of the house - whereas I've counted up to 25 times in earlier books. A little thing, I agree, but very annoying to a reader (Americans don't use that word so much, do they?). Anyway - to sum it up, this was not the best of Anne Perry's efforts, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. I do wish next time she develops the ending more - it's always so satisfying to confront the culprit - and pays more attention to consistency and verbal mores.
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