April 3, 2000
Prolific mystery author Perry (Bedford Square) explores the changing mores and social constraints of turn-of-the-century Victorian England in her latest novel featuring London police superintendent Thomas Pitt. Testament to his extensive stage (Amadeus), television and film credits, reader McCallum goes beyond mere narration to bare the depths of emotion represented by each of Perry's well-developed characters. Thus, he brings to life Pitt's diligent investigation into the murder of a young local photographer whose grotesquely posed corpse has been found floating in an abandoned boat on the Thames. With an array of dialects and perfectly timed inflections, McCallum leads the listener into the world of theater, underground pornography and the blossoming struggle for women's rightsDall areas with which Pitt comes in contactDand captures the ambience of an emerging bohemian society (represented by the beautiful and thought-provoking stage actress, Cecily Antrim) as well as the staid sensibilities of the older generation. Based on the Ballantine hardcover (Forecasts, Mar. 6).
February 1, 2000
Perry's Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series, set in late Victorian England, has set a standard for historical mysteries by using the past for more than ambience. Victorian mores drive the plots in these novels, setting context for the crimes and providing the psychological underpinnings for the characters' motivations. That is especially true here, as Perry sinks Inspector Pitt knee-deep in the morally suspect world of the theater and the completely subterranean culture of pornography. It begins with the discovery of a corpse floating in a punt on the Thames--not just any corpse but that of a man dressed like a woman, chained to the boat, and positioned in such a way as to suggest sexual ecstasy. With Pitt's wife, Charlotte, vacationing in Paris, the inspector finds himself relying on the amateur sleuthing of his mother-in-law, Caroline, who is married to an actor. The trail takes Pitt first to the theater, where avant-garde artists are daring to question the moral strictures of the era, and eventually to the demimonde itself--Half Moon Street, where photography galleries do a booming backroom business in pornographic images, one of which has provided the inspiration for the killer's costuming of the victim, himself a renowned photographer. If the final unmasking of the killer seems a bit staged, and if the dialogue occasionally rings false (especially in canned speeches about the value of artistic freedom), Perry does a superb job of capturing the disorienting effects of a changing culture on the fragile psyche of the individual. Cameos from Oscar Wilde and W. B. Yeats add to the sense of artistic turmoil set against middle-class timidity. Historical mystery fans will stand in line for this one. ((Reviewed February 1, 2000))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)
April 3, 2000
Set in Oscar Wilde's London in 1891, Perry's new Thomas Pitt mystery is all about the importance of being earnest. Superintendent Pitt is summoned to the Thames when police discover the body of a young man dressed in a torn green velvet gown, manacled to a punt, "in parody of ecstasy and death." At first it seems the victim is Henri Bonnard, a functionary in the French embassy; eventually, Pitt and dour sidekick Sergeant Tellman identify the body as Delbert Cathcart, a gifted photographer. Was there a connection between Cathcart and lookalike Bonnard? Why was Cathcart's body arranged in that disturbing "feminine pose," which Perry repeatedly describes as a "mockery" of paintings of the Lady of Shallot and Ophelia? Meanwhile, Pitt's mother-in-law, Caroline Fielding, recently married to an actor 17 years her junior, blushes and stammers as her husband and his theater friends expound on Ibsen. While she's clarifying her views on the irresponsibility of pornography, Caroline spends long hours entertaining Samuel Ellison, her late husband's American half-brother, who tearfully recounts his nation's history ("I watched the white man strengthen and the red man die"). For a grandma, Caroline is an oddly jejune character, and her moralistic musings overwhelm the mystery plot, which stagnates early on. What's clearly intended to be intellectually challenging comes across as silly and pretentious. There's even a pub scene in which Wilde himself witlessly pontificates, and "a pale young Irishman addressed by his fellows as Yeats, stare moodily into the distance." 15-city author tour; audio rights to Random House Audio.