Anne Perry - [Thomas Pitt 13]

BONUS: This edition contains excerpts from Anne Perry's Treason at Lisson Grove and Execution Dock.When the distinguished Mr. Justice Stafford dies of opium poisoning, his shocking demise resurrects one of the most sensational cases ever to inflame England: the murder five years before of Kingsley Blaine, whose body was found crucified in Farriers’ Lane. Amid the public hysteria for revenge, the police had arrested a Jewish actor who was soon condemned to hang. Police Inspector Thomas Pitt, investigating Stafford’s death, is drawn into the Farriers’ Lane murder as well, for it appears that Stafford may have been about to reopen the case. Pitt receives curiously little help from his colleagues on the force, but his wife, Charlotte, gleans from her social engagements startling insights into both cases. And slowly both Thomas and Charlotte begin to reach for the same sinister and deeply dangerous truth.From Library JournalPerry's established audience will clamor for this newest Inspector Pitt offering. Pitt's investigation into the death of a judge leads him to a notorious, unsolved crucifixion murder. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/92.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus ReviewsIn this 13th outing for Victorian-era Police Inspector Thomas Pitt and his well-born wife Charlotte (Belgrave Square, etc.), it's Gracie, the Pitt maid of all work, who uncovers the most telling and dramatic clue. The story starts with the poisoning murder of Court of Appeals Judge Samuel Stafford, in his box at the theater. Pitt's job is to determine whether the motive is connected to the hanging execution, five years before, of Aaron Godman, convicted of a particularly gruesome killing that roused anti-Semitic hysteria at the time. On the day of his death, Stafford had visited several of the lawyers involved in the Godman trial and subsequent appeal. Had he found something that might clear Godman's name--the goal of a persistent campaign by Godman's actress sister Tamar? Could the discreet affair between Stafford's wife Juniper and lawyer Adolphus Pryce have a bearing on the crime? When Constable Paterson, a major witness in Godman's trial, is found hanged in his bachelor lodgings, the case assumes an urgency that pushes Gracie to the impulsive act that marks the beginning of the end. Perry's expert hand with the Victorian scene is verbosely overplayed here, as is the florid, not-always-convincing plot. The same mixture, then, but suffering an attack of bloat. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.