Customer Reviews

Cain His Brother

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I love Anne Perry's ability to twist and wind through a story and keep you hanging until the last pages. I also love her well researched novels that offer such exsquisite detail about Victorian London, especially the class differences (particularly in this book). Unfortunately I found the conclusion of this novel truly unoriginal and disappointing. The result it ended with was a thought that had ocurred to me earlier in the novel, but I doubted it just because of the lack of inspiration it required. I am more fond of the Monk/Latterly series than the Pitts series, and "Cain..." is one of the better stories among the Perry novels, but I would definitely read it knowing in advance that the ending doesn't compare with the rest of the story. If you want a truly excellent Anne Perry book, read "The Face of a Stranger" (the first Monk/Latterly novel). A great read.

Perry's Victorian London mystery, featuring the amnesiac ex-Inspector William Monk and the Florence Nightingale-trained nurse Hester Latterly, revolves around the disappearance of a model husband and father of five with a successful business.

Angus Stonefield disappears on a visit to his vicious and violent twin brother in the slums and Angus' lovely wife is convinced that this time Caleb - the twin - has murdered her husband. While investigating, Monk runs into Hester Latterly setting up a make-shift hospital to deal with a serious outbreak of typhoid in the filthy and overcrowded slums.

Hester and Monk's relationship remains tensely ambivalent and Monk's bitter interior monologues become tediously repetitious. This is a heavily padded novel with an overworked plot device but Perry's fans will enjoy her gritty depiction of hopeless poverty and stark class divisions.

A lady instructs ex-inspector Monk to find evidence of her husband's death. She is convinced that Angus, a devoted husband and father has been murdered by his twin-brother Caleb, a true monster by all accounts. Her means of susbsistence are threatened because she and her five children cannot inherit Angus' fortune unless she is able to produce a body. Monk understands her existential dread. Of course, there is always the possibility that Angus went deliberately underground or that his wife had a hand in it. He is helped by nurse Hester Latterly, who is very busy with typhoid patients, rich and poor, and by star-attorney Oliver Rathbone who pleads Mrs. Angus' cause before court. Monk goes also through a private nightmare: he falls in love with a charming lady who encourages his advances. Suddenly she tears her clothes up in full view of many high-born eyewitnesses and runs away screaming...But before she is able to round off her scheme and ruin Monk's career, Hester resorts to a very artful ruse...

One of Perry's best. Gripping, psychologically revealing, and sociocritical. Perry is as good as Dickens when she exposes grievances. In one scene she reveals that the lower classes of the time owned just one pot: for cooking, doing the laundry, washing the baby and as nightpot...Hester's counteroffensive against the libellous lady will make you shake with laughter - and wince...

This is the best book by this author that I have read so far.

Perry's writing style is unobtrusive, somewhat given to unclear pronouns, but generally solid.

I found it interesting that nothing seemed to differ between this setting, in 1859, and the setting of the author's Pitt novels, in the late 19th century, except that the Pitts have telephones. I wonder how authentic that is. I found no obvious errors, except that, in keeping with the rest of Perry's books, the women seem very independent for the period.

Perry has come up with what must be one of the best characterization hooks ever invented. William Monk suffers from amnesia. He has reason to think he was an unpleasant person, a person capable of wronging others, in the past. But... he can never know what, exactly, he did. I would have liked to see a few more original touches in his *current* character, but it's still a fascinating idea.

The plot of Cain his Brother is outstanding. A minor consistency error here and there does not detract from its drama. A man has murdered his twin brother -- or has he? I thought I had the secret figured out several times, but I was wrong. But when the answer was revealed, it made perfect sense. Perry sometimes has surprise twists out of nowhere at the end of her books, but this time she got it exactly right. I remained unclear on one thing --Ravenstone's motivation -- but that may be my oversight.

This is a very entertaining historical mystery which I strongly recommend.

Today I read a used first edition that I bought, so part of my review is my memory of the first time I read it. Unlike some other mysteries I'd reread lately, I had no difficulty remembering the main points -- they made too strong an impression.

I thought I knew what was going on by page five. I was correct in one supposition, but the truth was far stranger than I'd imagined.

For a time it may seem that the typhoid epidemic in evil twin Caleb's stomping grounds is irrelevant, although interesting in itself if you care about medical history. I liked learning about Hester's version of oral rehydration therapy and blanched when I read about burning tobacco leaves for fumigation. Do not allow yourself to become impatient. It's all relevant and that will be revealed in due time.

Is Angus' wife, Genevieve, a cold-hearted accessory to his murder? Did Caleb murder Angus? Is Angus still alive? Why did the author give him the same name as one of the Pitts' cats? (You may ask, but you won't get an answer.) Since we have another Angus, will an Archie show up?

What about Lord Ravensbrook, who was guardian to the Stonefield brothers? What's his role in this tragedy? Mr. Niven was unwittingly ruined by his friend, Angus. Does he really hold no grudge?

Who is the lovely Drusilla and why is she seeking out William Monk? She's a member of Society, as he isn't. Certainly her many charms give Monk the opportunity to unfavorably compare Hester to her in his mind. Will he live to regret this or does Hester have a rival? Does Hester even care?

If you're a fan of Oliver Rathbone, don't worry. He'll have plenty to do during the trial scene. Hester isn't neglected, either. I thoroughly enjoyed her solution to one person's nasty little trap for our hero.

Contrary to what other reviewers have said, this book isn't confusing. While I admit to having been partially fooled the first time I read it, once a crucial point became clear, everything made perfect sense. I definitely recommend this novel.

This is the first Anne Perry book I have read. Therefore, you may take my review as a message to other first time Perry readers, not the fans.

I started the book with reasonable expectations. The opening scenes painted a normal murder mystery, perhaps a bit cliched, but decent. Monk set off on basic detection, and all was good. And he reported back to his client. And then he detected. And reported. Again, and again, with _zero_ new information or plot development. In between the fruitless detective efforts, Monk met new people and exchanged social minutiae with his few friends, but no progress on the case.

Monk eventually tracks the suspect down around page 200, brings him into custody, the trial starts, and then the suspect is murdered. Monk finds the culprit amazingly fast, the case is solved and the book ends. Why? I don't know. There was little build-up, and pithy resolution, so the book could have continued blithly for another 300 pages.

I did not enjoy this book. The pacing was bad. Roller-coaster writing. The plot was cliched: multiple personality disorder and amnesia were the core plot points of this confused book. The exposition was bad: the author repeated and digressed until you knew the scenery in nauseating detail. The characters were simplistic. They, too, were as stereotypical as the plot.

I do not reccommend this book to other readers.

At the end of this book--which features one of my favorite literary characters, William Monk--I still didn't know "who dunnit," and I felt a real sense of relief that it was OVER. I still enjoyed the book, but it was neither as riveting, nor as satisfying, as her other Monk novels.

William Monk, still suffering from almost total amnesia, is still working as a private detective in London in the 1850s. In this novel, with his sidekicks Callandra Daviot, Hester Latterly, and Oliver Rathbone, he is called to investigate the disappearance of Angus Stonefield at the request of his wife, Genevieve. For days and days (and hundreds of pages) Monk looks for clues as to how and why Angus has disappeared. Finally, Monk has to agree with Genevieve that the secret must lie in his relationship with his estranged brother, Caleb. Caleb freely admits he destroyed Angus, but Monk is not able to catch him. As with most William Monk novels, all the revelations come in the trial, where family secrets are finally displayed.

If you are a real Monk fan like me you will still enjoy this book. However, if you read Monk here and there, you probably will do better to skip this book and move on to another one. You also might enjoy this book better if you watch Heavenly Creatures and find out about Anne Perry's adolescence!

I liked Anne Perry at first but must say that the more I read of her, the more impatient I become with the tedious repetitiveness of her descriptive passages.

This was one of her better books in regards to the "Brothers Stone/Stonefield". I was left rather disappointed, however, by the completely unrelated subplot of Drusilla Wyndham. Unless this is a precursor for a future novel, I felt it was "fluff" to fill space. I hope I am proved wrong.

William Monk is hired by Genevieve Stonefield to find her missing husband, Angus. He was last seen visiting his twin brother Caleb, who lives in Limehouse; the destitute part of London. Monk must find Caleb, but no - one is willing to talk. Just who is Caleb, and why is everyone so afraid of him. Monk must face some of his own private demons and realises that even the simplest things can be more complicated than he ever imagined. Another brilliant novel from Anne Perry.