The Silent Cry [Mass Market Paperback]

Readers of Anne Perry's series of Victorian murder mysteries know that her novels are as much social histories as crime stories. She pens her tales with an acute eye for period detail and a strong moral outrage at the hypocrisies and miseries of life in 19th-century England. Mysteries featuring Inspector Thomas Pitt and his upper-class wife, Charlotte, explore the life of the middle class and aristocracy; those that center on William Monk illuminate the back alleys and pauper's hospitals of England's lower classes. In The Silent Cry, Monk and his friend Hester Latterly, an independent young woman inured to life's horrors by her nursing service during the Crimean War, investigate the murder of prostitutes in Seven Dials. As always, Perry's grim landscape of tenements, sweatshops, and boozing kens becomes almost as much a character as the living people who inhabit them, while Monk and Hester's rebellious intelligence and unconventionality keep us coming back for more. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Prolific murder-mystery writer Perry has evaded the scientific precision of modern forensic fact-finding by weaving current-day issues and characters into a richly detailed Victorian-era milieu. One man is found murdered and another on the edge of death in the notorious London slum called St. Giles. Although it looks as if they may have engaged in a mortal fight, they are in fact father and son from a well-to-do family. Later, links develop between these men and a series of violent rapes of prostitutes. Hester Latterly, nurse and protector of the surviving son, Rhys, counterbalances detective William Monk in their mutual pursuit of the truth. By the novel's end, revelations of corruption and depravity break through the severe conventions of upper-class Victorian prudery in a dramatic courtroom scene. Perry followers and others will enjoy this new addition. Highly recommended.?Michelle Foyt, Fairfield P.L., Ct.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Perry's latest once again stars the enigmatic and intriguing detective William Monk and feisty Hester Latterly, nurse-turned-sleuth and precursor of today's tough female P.I. Two separate and tragic cases engage the pair. Hester is nursing young Rhys Duff, who's been beaten and left for dead next to the body of his father in a London alley. The accident has left Rhys near death and unable to speak. Meanwhile, Monk is investigating a series of vicious rapes and beatings in the seedy St. Giles area. Monk and Hester soon realize that the two cases may be related. The police believe Rhys killed his father and that the two were part of a group of men involved in the brutal rapes and beatings. Although the evidence looks overwhelming, Hester is convinced of Rhys' innocence and insists that Monk help prove it. With his usual tenacity, he does just that, revealing the stunning truth in a dramatic courtroom scene. Perry piques the reader's interest with a suspenseful plot filled with quirky twists and uses strong, larger-than-life characters and authentically detailed descriptions of Victorian London to give her story impact and intensity. An outstanding entry in a fine series. Emily Melton --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

It's a long way from sheltered Ebury Street to the disreputable neighborhood of St. Giles, but solicitor Leighton Duff and his son Rhys must have had their reasons for making the journey--though those reasons may never be known, since Duff has been beaten to death in Water Lane, and Rhys, beaten nearly to death himself, can't gesture or speak. What brought the two men to St. Giles? Who beat them so savagely? And what do they have to do with a series of equally brutal rapes of neighborhood factory women moonlighting as prostitutes? Having posed these tantalizing questions and having set Crimean veteran Hester Latterly to nursing Rhys and inquiry agent William Monk on the trail of the rapists, Perry switches gears to mellifluous outrage, railing inertly against the hypocrisies of Victorian gentlemen who insist on proper wives while taking their pleasures wherever they find them, and fuming about the impossibility of winning a prosecution for rape. When the rapes and murder converge with Monk's mounting evidence--evidence indicating that Rhys was one of the rapists and that he killed the father who was trying to stop him--the stage is set for one of Perry's uniquely unconvincing trial scenes. But Hester manages to spring a climactic surprise as stunning as it is unlikely. As overblown as any of Perry's recent historical forays (Weighed in the Balance, 1996, etc.), but fueled by the painful intensity of Rhys Duff's silent cry. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

“[Perry’s] early-Victorian series . . . has deepened and darkened its insights into the social evils that burdened London’s underclasses.”—The New York Times Book Review

“The action careers between the low- and high-born in Victorian society. The denouement is shocking, and the characters are so richly drawn that you’ll miss them when they’re gone.”—Los Angeles Times


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Deep in London's dangerous slums, Victorians transacted their most secret and shameful business. For a price, a man could procure whatever he wanted, but it happened now and then that the price he paid was his life.

Now, in sunless Water Lane, respected solicitor Leighton Duff lies dead, kicked and beaten to death. Beside him lies the barely living body of his son, Rhys. The police cannot fathom these brutal assaults until shrewd investigator William Monk uncovers a connection between them and a series of rapes and beatings of local prostitutes. Then, shockingly, it begins to appear that young Rhys may have killed his own father. . . .

"The action careers between the low- and high-born in Victorian society. The denouement is shocking, and the characters are so richly drawn that you'll miss them when they're gone."
--Los Angeles Times

"MONK IS A MARVELOUSLY DARK, BROODING CREATION, DRIVEN BY HIS OWN PRIVATE DEMONS."
--The Cleveland Plain Dealer

Among Anne Perry's other novels featuring investigator William Monk are Weighed in the Balance, Cain His Brother, and Defend and Betray. She also writes the popular novels featuring Thomas and Charlotte Pitt, including Pentecost Alley, Traitors Gate, The Hyde Park Headsman, Highgate Rise, Ashworth Hall, which was a Main Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, and Brunswick Gardens. "Her grasp of Victorian character and conscience still astonishes,  said The Cleveland Plain Dealer about the author. Hundreds of thousands of readers agree.