mike.holmes's Full Review: Anne Perry - A Sudden, Fearful Death
This is the fourth book in the William Monk detective series written by Anne Perry. It's also the fourth review I've written. Once again, Ms. Perry, who also wrote another popular Victorian period mystery series involving Thomas and Charlotte Pitt, manages to weave a fascinating tale of murder most foul with elments of social problems that exist to this day.
THE PLOT
The primary plot for the book concerns the murder of a gifted nurse who served her country (England) in the Crimean War. The nurse, Prudence Barrymore, came from a prominent family and worked as a nurse only because she wanted to serve the sick and dying. After her wartime experience with her mentor, Florence Nightengale, Prudence worked in a hospital where she ultimately was murdered for reasons not known.
The police were naturally called in but one of the Board of Governors of the hospital, Lady Callandra Daviot, felt that they could not solve the case. Thus, she contacted her friend, William Monk, who was now a private detective after having worked for the police for several years.
Monk, who also was involved in a rather nasty case which involved rape, worked on the case with his "love-hate" partner in criminal detection, Hester Latterly. Hester had also been a nurse in Crimea but had helped Monk in solving several cases.
A very unlikely suspect, prominent surgeon Sir Herbert, is arrested for the murder of Ms. Barrymore. Herbert hires the best barrister in the business, Oliver Rathbone to defend him in the trial.
While most of the book is devoted to the murder trial, there are issues which are important to modern times throughout the book. Specifically, abortion, women's rights and medical care all play an important role in the book.
WHY I REALLY LIKED THIS BOOK
Although I found one or two matters which I considered inconsistent in this book, it is nevertheless another fascinating look at crime and detection as it existed in Victorian England in the 19th Century.
Ms. Perry continues to flesh out her main characters Monk, Latterly and Rathbone in each book. William Monk's character is not only a great detective but he is fighting a continuing battle against an almost total memory loss as the result of a serious accident in the first book of this series.
As for Hester Latterly, the author continues to show how nursing as a profession was frowned upon in the mid-nineteenth century. Nurses were not well trained and they were given jobs that were disgusting and not really related to medical care. Of course, they were underpaid which unfortunately is still the case.
Since I am a criminal trial lawyer, I'm always fascinated in the work of Oliver Rathbone and the very realistic portrayal of the trials in each book. Ms. Perry captures the thinking of those days very well in the following passage:
"The jurors were men, naturally. Women were not considered capable of rational judgment sufficient to vote as part of the mass of the population."
Of course, all male juries were still in existence well into the 20th Century. Women were also completely locked out of the medical world because "they didn't have the talent" to become doctors.
Ms. Perry's ability to created such fascinating scenarios combined with her accurate portrayal of the worlds of law and medicine have captured me as a reader. I look forward to reading the next book in this excellent series.
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