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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN num: 9780804112833
ISBN number: 0804112835
Label: Ivy Books
Manufacturer: Ivy Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 464
Printing Date: August 29, 1994
Publishing house: Ivy Books
Release Date: August 29, 1994
Sale Popularity Level: 57108
Studio: Ivy Books
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Product Description:
Prudence Barrymore, a talented nurse who had worked with Florence Nightingale in the Crimea, is found strangled to death in a London hospital. Private inquiry agent William Monk is engaged to investigate this horrific crime. Gradually, Monk assembles the portrait of a remarkable woman. Yet he also discerns the shadow of a tragic evil and a frightening glimmer of his own eclipsed past . . .
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Rated by buyers 
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After reading all the "Thomas & Charlotte Pitt" Victorian London murder mysteries, this series, starring police inspector-turned-private detective William Monk (and set thirty years earlier), are quite different. Where most of us sympathize strongly with Pitt and his wife, and would like them is we were to meet them, Monk is another kettle of fish. He's angry, arrogant, superior, self-righteous, often cruel in his methods, occasionally violent, and generally distasteful. The fact that he's usually right, and that other investigators respect his professional brilliance doesn't make him any more likeable -- and they don't.. When he was forced to resign from the police, it was largely his own fault for having alienated so many people. Anyway, Monk is own his own now, dependent on Lady Callandra to underwrite his career when clients are scarce, and frequently teamed in his cases with Hester Latterley, Crimean nurse (also rather arrogant on occasion), and with Oliver Rathbone, a highly gifted defense attorney (. . . and also rather arrogant on occasion). This case concerns the murder of Prudence Barrymore, another Crimean nurse, whose body was found stuffed down the laundry chute in the London hospital where she was employed. Prudence's greatest desire her entire life was to become a doctor -- a totally impossible ambition for any woman in 1858, no matter how brilliant. That gender inequality is one of Perry's social themes this time out -- another being the complete lack of professionalism among nurses of the day, who were ignorant, low-born, and frequently drunk, and who were little more than hospital charwomen. Prudence worked closely with a highly regarded surgeon, who may be the murderer -- or maybe not. The third theme is abortion rights, about which Perry never quite clarifies her personal position: Is there a difference between free abortions performed in the back of butcher shops for the impoverished, exhausted mother with far more children than she can feed, and abortions for convenience for the wealthy, performed by skilled surgeons and for which they pay high prices? In any case, it's a generally well-written novel with several subplots, romantic and otherwise, and Hester and Rathbone get largely equal billing.
Rated by buyers -
I have recently started to listen to Anne Perry mysteries. I have thoroughly enjoyed them. The reason this one gets a four-star rating is because I was disappointed with the role Calandra played in this one. She has been a stalwart and formidable presence in the earlier books, not one to worry about someone's reputation when justice is at stake. I guess we're supposed to believe she has temporarily lost her presence of mind because she is in love.
Other than that spoiler, I enjoyed this thoroughly. I especially enjoy the courtroom scenes, the carefully crafted defense of a supposedly innocent doctor.
Rated by buyers 
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Anne Perry keeps you guessing from the very first page. What an imagination!
Rated by buyers -
It has everything an absorbing suspenseful victorian mystery could possess and it has extreme relevance to our mutual modern lives. History: it is unbiased history made up as fiction. Life manners pain and hypocrisy in the century behind us but all of this is still happening right now. Do not read if reality offends you.
Rated by buyers 
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I won't bother to rehash the plot of this book, as that has been done. I have very much enjoyed the William Monk series, but was quite disappointed with this particular entry. Although I agree with the reviewer that the opening scene with Marianne does not originally make sense to the reader, the relevance becomes pretty clear by at most page 100. The 200 pages or so devoted to determining what it was Prudence actually wanted were almost completely wasted. I had figured out the answer to this question immediately, but thought that in Perry's traditional style, Monk and crew would be pick this up as easily as I had, and then it would be on to the subsequent twist. Alas, they did not pick this up until the last 20-30 pages of the book!! The last chapter, which a previous reviewer raved about, in my opinion was remniscent of some of Patricia Cornwell's poorly exectued later entries in her Kay Scarpetta series: pick a person randomly to solve the crime. Also, character development was not up to Perry's usual standards; there was no additional insights or progressions of any of the ongoing relationships. I gave the book two stars because I enjoyed both the description of hospital consitions in 1850's London and did originally like the plot but that it was not brought to a sufficient height and lacked "meat." I will continue reading Perry, since I know later books in this series are up to her usual standards, but would forewarn readers that this is not the book to start with if one wishes to "test" Perry.
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