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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780804115070
ISBN number: 0804115079
Label: Ivy Books
Manufacturer: Ivy Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 416
Printing Date: September 30, 1996
Publishing house: Ivy Books
Release Date: September 30, 1996
Sale Popularity Level: 127510
Studio: Ivy Books
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
'A TRIUMPH . . . A model of the richness and subtleties of relationships, characters, and story construction.'
--Chicago Sun-Times
In his family life, Angus Stonefield had been gentle and loving; in business, a man of probity; and in his relationship with his twin brother, Caleb, a virtual saint. Now Angus is missing, and it appears more than possible that Caleb--a creature long since abandoned to depravity--has murdered him. Hired to find the missing man, William Monk puts himself into his shoes, searching for clues to Angus's fate and his vicious brother's whereabouts. Slowly, Monk inches toward the truth--and also, unwittingly, toward the destruction of his good name and livelihood. . . .
'MASTERFUL . . . DARKLY CHILLING . . . Perry eloquently delivers to her readers the flavor of Victorian England. . . . Readers will be kept entertained and guessing--right up to the final pages.'
--Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
'JUST WHEN YOU THINK YOU HAVE IT FIGURED OUT, THINK AGAIN! No one can capture and bring to life the drama, excitement, and feel of Victorian England like Perry.'
--Mostly Murder
A Main Selection of the Mystery Guild
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Rated by buyers 
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Perry always includes some sociopolitical evil in her mystery novels about Victorian London, to give her more enlightened characters something to fulminate against. This includes especially Hester Latterley, ex-Crimean War nurse, sometimes her friend Oliver Rathbone, one of the city's leading criminal attorneys, and occasionally William Monk, ex-police inspector turned private detective. This is the sixth in this series and where Monk was the major focus and POV character in the very first few books, that role is now pretty evenly divided among the three of them. This series is also unlike the author's longer-running "Thomas Pitt" series (set a generation later) in that as much as one-third of the plot is set in the courtroom, Perry-Mason-style. This time, Angus Stonefield, successful and morally irreproachable self-made businessman, has disappeared and his wife (who is perhaps his widow) is becoming frantic since until he's declared dead she can't make decisions about the business to provide for herself and her five children. Angus had a twin brother, Caleb, living a violent and ne'er-do-well life down by the docks in Limehouse, and Angus apparently visited him regularly, out of loyalty and perhaps guilt over his own success. Did Caleb murder his brother? Monk takes on the case while Hester joins a couple of socially aware society ladies in running a makeshift hospital in Limehouse during a typhoid epidemic. Of course, Caleb is eventually captured and put on trial for murder, but the evidence is still highly circumstantial since no body has been found. And then things start to get complicated. Unfortunately, through various bits of dialogue and speculation by the characters, Perry telegraphs the "maguffin" by about the third chapter. It's not a bad book, but the pacing is pretty bumpy and the resolution is not entirely believable. Perry seems to have hit a lazy patch.
Rated by buyers 
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I received books on the promised date and in very satisfactory condidition for a used book.
Rated by buyers -
As a history buff, I enjoy Victorian novels and the Monk novels are both history and mystery.
Rated by buyers -
Perry's Victorian London mystery, featuring the amnesiac ex-Inspector William Monk and the Florence Nightingale-trained nurse Hester Latterly, revolves around the disappearance of a model husband and father of five with a successful business.
Angus Stonefield disappears on a visit to his vicious and violent twin brother in the slums and Angus' lovely wife is convinced that this time Caleb - the twin - has murdered her husband. While investigating, Monk runs into Hester Latterly setting up a make-shift hospital to deal with a serious outbreak of typhoid in the filthy and overcrowded slums.
Hester and Monk's relationship remains tensely ambivalent and Monk's bitter interior monologues become tediously repetitious. This is a heavily padded novel with an overworked plot device but Perry's fans will enjoy her gritty depiction of hopeless poverty and stark class divisions.
Rated by buyers -
I love Anne Perry's ability to twist and wind through a story and keep you hanging until the last pages. I also love her well researched novels that offer such exsquisite detail about Victorian London, especially the class differences (particularly in this book). Unfortunately I found the conclusion of this novel truly unoriginal and disappointing. The result it ended with was a thought that had ocurred to me earlier in the novel, but I doubted it just because of the lack of inspiration it required. I am more fond of the Monk/Latterly series than the Pitts series, and "Cain..." is one of the better stories among the Perry novels, but I would definitely read it knowing in advance that the ending doesn't compare with the rest of the story. If you want a truly excellent Anne Perry book, read "The Face of a Stranger" (the very first Monk/Latterly novel). A great read.
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