Cardington Crescent

Emily is accused of murdering her husband in the house of relatives. Ending not very satisfactory.

Normally I give Anne Perry four stars, but I just didn’t feel this one got there. This one spent too much time on Emily. And the ending was a let down. Not my favorite, but it won’t keep me from reading another. The Thims and Charlotte Pitt stories are worth it. ( )

Thoroughly enjoyed this installment of Charlotte & Thomas Pitt but have to wonder at Charlotte's family experiencing yet another death in the family due to murder. Very unlucky and very unlikely. Still, it was a great read. ( )

Not great, but not bad. The plot was pretty complicated with red herrings as plentiful as corpses. All-in-all, I think I prefer the William Monk series to the C&T Pitt series.

I found this episode to be very uneven in character development. In the middle Aunt Vespasia is strong and as redoubtable as ever. Suddenly she becomes enfeebled, and the next thing you know, she is virtually invisible.

Sybilla waxes as an angel and wanes as a temptress. William is clueless, then a cuckhold, then a romantic. The father and grandmother are unlovable and stay unlikable throughout. Thank heavens!! ( )

Three stars for a plot which seesaws between two seemingly disparate murders, four stars for its engaging story, characters, and sense of historical place, including Charlotte and Emily, and Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould who play major roles.

Cardington Crescent is the eighth book in Anne Perry’s Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series of historical mysteries. The main story takes place in June 1887. George and Emily are staying with his relations, Eustace March in Cardington Crescent when George is murdered. Pitt is called in to investigate. Emily, the prime suspect calls for her sister, Charlotte, and she helps Thomas with the investigation. The murder is solved at the end of the novel, but not before another murder is committed. As with the other Pitt novels, the theme of Victorian hypocrisy, injustice, and mistreatment, especially of women and children is flawlessly portrayed.

However the book begins with another murder, seemingly unrelated to George March’s murder, and not mentioned again until late in the book. The willful dog of a passerby discovers human remains by the side of a churchyard in Bloomsbury, hacked and bleeding and tied up in grease paper. After Pitt’s initial attempts to discover the victim’s identity and murderer, the incident is dropped, not picked up until late in the novel when a clue discovered during the March murder investigation, leads to the solution of the Bloomsbury murders, and, helps to unveil the Cardington Crescent killer. This disjointed plot was mildly puzzling, but did not distract me enough to stop reading. Without hesitation, I recommend the book to all who love the Pitt series.