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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN num: 9780449216866
ISBN number: 0449216861
Label: Fawcett
Manufacturer: Fawcett
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 352
Printing Date: July 30, 1989
Publishing house: Fawcett
Release Date: July 30, 1989
Sale Popularity Level: 161689
Studio: Fawcett
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Product Description:
When Inspector Thomas Pitt is asked to reopen a three-year-old murder case which had taken place in London's luxurious Hanover Close, he knows that his superiors want him to smooth things over. But that is just not the way Pitt operates. With his wellborn wife, Charlotte, to aid him in penetrating the well-known reserve of high society, the inquisitive Pitts discover a secret so shocking it would lead to more deaths--and, quite possibly -- Pitt's own....
'[A] complex, gripping and highly satisfying mystery...An adroit blend of thick London atmosphere and a convincing cast...A totally surprising yet wonderfully plausible finale.'
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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Rated by buyers 
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'Silence in Hanover Close' is one of Perry's best Pitt mysteries and I have been an avid reader of all of her books and various characters. Anne Perry is an amazingly gifted author and her ability to relate 19th Century England is a rich and rewarding experience to be enjoyed by all.
Rated by buyers 
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Inspector Thomas Pitt of the London Metropolitan Police in the late 1880s faces one of his more grueling cases in this ninth book in the series when he's asked to reopen the investigation into the murder three years before of a high official in the Foreign Office. His death was thought to be the result of a bungled burglary, but maybe not. Now the widow is contemplating remarriage, to another F.O. employee, and the Powers That Be want to make sure there will be no unexpected embarrassment on either side -- or that's what Pitt is led to believe, anyway. Hanover Close is a short cul-de-sac in which the three principal families are interrelated and know each other well, which limits things. Pitt speaks to the servants, all of whom had told their stories before, but one ladies' maid remembers an oddity -- a woman in cerise, flitting about in the middle of the night. And the subsequent day, the maid is dead, too. Charlotte Pitt, who married considerably beneath herself, is familiar with the ins and outs of Society and contributes her own skills, but it's her sister, Emily, bored widow of Lord Ashworth (murdered in a previous book in the series) who risks the most, going undercover as a ladies' maid herself. And then Pitt finds himself in a very serious situation, suspected of murder himself. There's much less of the social commentary that Perry usually lards each of her novels with, except for an interesting and somewhat amusing view of below stairs through the eyes of a relatively high-born lady.
Rated by buyers -
I like Anne Perry in general. Don't read too many in a row because they are all essentially the same... not entirely great mysteries surrounded by extensive social commentary. Excellent social commentary, very interesting, insightful, etc... but it slows down the plot to a snail's pace. Reading one once in a while is nice... but don't indulge in many at a time or you'll be disappointed in the plot and pace and rather bored with the social commentary. (at least, I was... and it was one of the selling points early on in the series...)
Rated by buyers -
I had been working my way through Anne Perry's William Monk series and had not read one of her Charlotte & Thomas Pitt novels for quite a while. In my effort to learn from other authors and editors, however, and thus become a better novelist myself, I was reading Donald Maass' Writing the Breakout Novel.
Maass, who is Perry's agent, refers to "Silence in Hanover Close" as her "breakout" novel, attributing her increased sales from that point forward to the enlarged premise of this story --- not just crime, but a crime that may also be treason.
The murder of an important employee of the British Foreign Office, and the disappearance of documents which might be relevant to important negotiations with the Germans about dividing up Africa (this in the late 1800s), certainly provides the higher stakes. Perry takes this possibility and develops an exciting detective story.
The unorthodox work of Charlotte and Emily, while Thomas is "otherwise detained," was a pleasure to savor, and of course there are all the period details that make reading Perry's work so much fun.
There's also a major surprise at the end, one that I did not intuit, which brings together all of the unexplained threads that had me properly puzzled. If I have any criticism of the book, it's that the ending comes about a little too quickly. But it's a good one.
If you'd like to see more of my comments about "Silence in Hanover Close," I refer you to my "Education of a Novelist" blog which you can reach by searching the web for "weinstein education of a novelist".
You are of course invited to consider my just-published NYC-based legal thriller A Good Conviction, which tells the heart-wrenching story of a young man wrongly imprisoned in Sing Sing for a murder he did not commit by a Manhattan ADA who may have known he was innocent, and also my historical novel, The Heretic (Library of American Fiction), describing the persecution of a family of secret Jews by the Catholic Church on the eve of the Spanish Inquisition.
LEW WEINSTEIN
Rated by buyers 
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Perhaps I have read and heard too many Perry books. This one finally came out in audiobook. Not to be passed up. However, fairly early in the book I knew what the big surprise would be. Knowing Perry's writing goals, it was obvious, despite the major plot distraction. I knew none of the three "detectives", and friends, would stumble to it until the end of the book. (More than half the book passes while they wonder and wonder, not exercising their usually efficient brain power.) But they never did. I can't even belatedly feel pleased about someone's cleverness. So it's really a disappointing effort.
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