| Summary: |
"No other contemporary writer evokes the splendor of Victorian London as brilliantly as does distinguished novelist Anne Perry. Embracing the whole city, she breathes life into every cell of it: the mansions of the wealthy, the swarming hovels of the poor, and the crowded gaslit streets that connect the two -- streets that Police Inspector Thomas Pitt knows like the back of his hand. When an obscure moneylender named William Weems is murdered in the humble Clerkenwell district, there are no mourners and more than a little discreet rejoicing among those whose meager earnings he so mercilessly devoured. Only one man seems troubled by the crime -- that respected aristocrat Lord Sholto Byam, who approaches a friend in the police department to ask for help in exonerating himself from any possible connection with the crime. It is an astonishing move, for had he not come forward, the police might have had no reason to suspect that he knew the dead man. So baffling and delicate is the matter that Inspector Pitt, the best man on the force, is summoned to deal with the mystery. When he finds in the murdered man's office a list containing the names of some of London's most distinguished gentlemen, Pitt begins to measure the magnitude of the job he has been given. William Weems was no mere common usurer, but a vicious blackmailer, and his sordid death is only the first ripple in a wave of scandal that threatens to engulf not only Lord Byam and his beautiful wife, but many others as well. Fortunately, Pitt's clever, well-born wife, Charlotte, has entree to London's best society. At glittering balls and over gossipy tea tables, she observes a world of passion, power, and greed that the police are seldom permitted to see. With her astute assistance, Pitt is finally able to root out the monstrous truth." -- |
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