Slaves of Obsession

October 2, 2000
At the start of Perry's latest Victorian page-turner (after The Twisted Root), London-based private detective William Monk agrees to attend a dinner party at the lush home of arms dealer Daniel Alberton only for the sake of his wife, Hester. Hester, who served as a nurse with Florence Nightingale in the Crimea, is as gregarious as her husband is reserved. At the party, the Monks meet a volatile cast of characters, including Daniel's wife, Judith, a half-Italian beauty devoted to her husband and their 16-year-old daughter, Merrit. Daniel clearly adores Judith, as does her cousin, Casbolt, her husband's dapper partner in the arms business. Merrit, however, is blinded by passion for Lyman Breeland, a tall, thirtyish American who has come to England to buy guns for the Union Army. When Breeland's handsome Confederate counterpart, Philo Trace, appears unexpectedly at the end of dinner, Daniel admits that he's selling guns to Trace rather than Breeland because Trace asked first. Later, after Daniel turns up dead and Merrit runs off to America with Breeland, Monk and Hester follow, landing with Trace in the thick of the first battle of Bull Run. Monk brings Breeland back to London to stand trial for Daniel's murder, only to have doubts before the ship docks. Rich in period detail and ripe with an understanding of the agony of unrequited love, Perry's heated tale is marred by a subplot involving blackmail and pirates that never pays off. In addition, patches of overwriting will flag the villain to astute readers. 10-city author tour.

August 9, 2000
The latest in Perry's Victorian mysteries featuring William and Hester Monk takes the reader from British drawing rooms and courtrooms to American Civil War battlefields and the docks and depths of the Thames River. Vividly describing all of these settings, Perry weaves an intricate tale of love, greed, slavery, and murder. William Monk, agent of enquiry, is employed to discover who is blackmailing respectable merchant and arms dealer Daniel Alberton. Monk soon finds himself investigating Alberton's murder, however, and looking for the murderer on the battlefield at Bull Run. Full of unexpected twists and revelations, this intriguing and satisfying mystery is one of Perry's best. All public libraries will want to purchase it to satisfy the author's many fans.--Jean Langlais, St. Charles P.L., IL

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2000
In her eleventh William Monk mystery, Perry, noted for evocations of Victorian-era England, extends her range from the drawing rooms and choked streets of London to the American Civil War. This surprising stretch serves to heighten the reader's sense of the horrors of war by showing it from a British perspective. Monk, a "private agent of enquiry," is asked by a wealthy London gun dealer to clear him of suspicion in the ruin of a Wildean aristocrat who was exploited for his beauty and then left for dead. Monk meets the curious collection of people drawn to gun dealer Albertons' home, including a Confederate and a Union soldier seeking armaments. After an altercation with the Union soldier, Albertons is discovered murdered. Both his armaments and his daughter are missing, presumably gone with the Union soldier, compelling Monk and wife Hester to pursue him to America. Perry's characters are richly drawn and the plot satisfyingly serpentine. However, the best element in this novel is Perry's depiction of the excitement preceding and the butchery during the Battle of Bull Run, reminiscent of Thackeray's unflinching portrait of Waterloo in "Vanity Fair. As Hester uses her Crimean War nursing experience to aid the stricken soldiers, her feelings of revulsion and inadequacy are especially compelling. A remarkable addition to the Perry canon. ((Reviewed June 1 & 15, 2000))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)