Anne Perry. Brunswick Gardens (1998)

     Anne Perry. Brunswick Gardens (1998) #18 in the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series. They have been married ten years, have two children and a very happy married life. An apparent murder at Brunswick Gardens brings Dominic Corde (brother-in-law, who figured in the first book) back into their lives. The case has few facts (Perry withholds most of them until the very end), and depends on psychology for its solution. But the psychology doesn’t fit. Charlotte’s knowledge of the classics provides the key that puts certain love letters in a new light, and by snooping discovers evidence of an obsessive love that proves to be the motive for disguising an accident as a murder and eventually committing an actual murder.
     The main suspects are all clergy. This gives Perry an opportunity to sketch the theological and spiritual effects of Darwin’s theory, among other things. Late-Victorian feminism also figures in the plot. Well done, good narrative pace, a bit too much telling rather than showing, and an old-fashioned omniscient narrator make for a pleasant entertainment. An afterpiece indicates that the first book in the series was made into a TV pilot, but I’ve not seen any evidence of a series.
     PS: I went to Perry’s website, worth a look. She helped her friend kill her mother, but being only 15 at the time, she wasn’t hanged. An interview on YouTube indicated that she has thought hard about her crime and guilt, which may explain the moral philosophising in her books. There was no mention of the Cater Street movie. ** (2008)