Paragon Walk

Charlotte and Thomas Pitt are back investigating murder. This time a young woman has been raped and murdered in Paragon Walk, a fashionable London street that happens to be home to Charlotte's sister Emily. Charlotte and Emily decide to investigate. As Charlotte has married down and become a policeman's wife, Emily will have to dress Charlotte back up as the fashionable lady she once was.

This book seemed to be more social interaction and less crime-solving. Charlotte and Emily spend most of their time attending social functions and gossiping. It seems that Perry really wanted to spend more time commenting on social life and customs than to write a mystery. Undoubtedly the bitchy social interaction is amusing. It's a backstabbing, every show more woman for herself arena, where Victorian manners and their transgressions are on full display. Still, I really wanted more mystery. I hope Perry returns to more mystery in the next volume of the series. show less

I liked this book even though it is more of a slice of life on an upper-crust Victorian street than a mystery. I like the characters and the relationship between sisters Emily who married up and Charlotte who married down. Perry keeps her "Why I hate Victorians" essays to a minimum { for Anne Perry.) But Charlotte spending the funeral of a murdered 17 year old rape victim fuming about the absurdity of Victorian mourning customs is totally cold-hearted.

Dragged a bit at times - and Thomas Pitt was merely a vehicle feeding information to his wife and sister-in-law, the real detectives. Also we see further hints of the weird facial-feature-description technique that will eventually plague the William Monk novels - I think in this case, a nose was described as "a trifle too sharp." Still, I enjoyed it exactly as much as I expected to.

Inspector Pitt has caught another case in a high-class area. The residents of Paragon walk are shocked when an 18 year old girl, innocent and naive, on the cusp of entering society is raped and murdered. Is this act the work of an itinerant madman as the neighbors wish to believe or does their area harbour a vile and terrifying secret? (hint: it's probably the latter).
Again Emily uses her societal connections to run her own investigation. I was pleased that she is allowing Charlotte entry to her home and introducing her to friends, though Charlotte's marriage was so much below her station that she has to conceal the identity of her husband (well, and also if they knew she was married to Thomas, they'd never discuss anything in front of show more her.
These girls are such wonderful characters, as is the newly introduced aunt of Emily's husband. She's a riot. show less

If you like Victorian cozies and lovable characters, this book is for you.

With the third in the Pitt series, the author, Anne Perry hits her stride. The story begins with a body in the morgue. The victim is slight, delicately featured, beautifully dressed, her arms bruised, her face barely touched by life. Fanny Nash is seventeen when she is stabbed and raped in Paragon Walk, a London neighborhood of impeccable pedigree, and the neighborhood, as luck would have it, of Charlotte’s sister, Emily, and her husband, Lord Ashworth.

Pitt is called in to to investigate. In so doing, he scrapes the surface of society—the inhabitants, their servants, their families—revealing their stories, their guilt, their secrets, their relationships with show more one another, their pompous ill regard for most everyone else. Ms Perry lays bare the hypocrisy at the heart of Victorian society, the theme at the heart of this intricately plotted, beautifully and accurately detailed novel. You won’t want it to end, but end it does, just after the mystery is solved.

Meet the ageless beauty, Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould
A recurring character in the Pitt series, Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould, makes her first appearance in this novel. A favorite character of many readers, this one included, she happens to be staying with Emily and George in their Paragon Walk townhouse. Beautifully attired, outspoken, and witty, she serves, perhaps as the author’s point of view, but certainly as a delightful deus ex machina in this, as well as in subsequent novels in the series. One of her more envious characteristics is that she doesn’t age. She’s about seventy or eighty in Paragon Walk, and she approaches seventy in Treason in Lisson Grove which takes place, almost fifteen years later. You go, girl, Cumming-Gould! show less

I am on a collision course and I cannot stop. I have read all the Monk and Christmas series by Anne Perry, and have started on the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series. The Monk series remains my favorite collection. The Pitt series lacks the depth and character of the Monk series, even though both series feature the different classes of people. Perry continues in the Pitt series to show the hate and vengeance of females. Perry elegantly describes the fashion of the upper crust, but emotion hides in this elegance.

Having jumped into this series in the middle of the books, I decided to go back and read some of the earlier ones and it made me realize what I liked about the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt in the first place. This is the third book in the series and Charlotte and Thomas are still newly married with a baby daughter. A young woman from a ealthy area in London is found raped and murdered on the very stret tht Charlotte's sister, Emily, lives. Pitt, of course, has to investigate and in doing so we re introduced to wonderful Aunt Vespasia, who is wonderfully arch - much more so than she is in the later volumes. And Charlotte and Emily are a great duo as they snoop around trying to find out who the real culprit is. Anne Perry even allows show more Charlotte to be silly - something that definitely does not happen in the later books.

Reading these early efforts makes me wish that Pitt was still a policeman and that Charlotte was once again his trusty partner in detective work. It would make thte later books a lot more fun. show less