Seven Dials (Charlotte and Thomas Pitt) - Hardcover

Perry, Anne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345440072 ISBN 13: 9780345440075

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2003

Synopsis

Thomas Pitt, mainstay of Her Majesty’s Special Branch, is summoned to Connaught Square mansion where the body of a junior diplomat lies huddled in a wheelbarrow. Nearby stands the tenant of the house, the beautiful and notorious Egyptian woman Ayesha Zakhari, who falls under the shadow of suspicion. Pitt’s orders are to protect—at all costs—the good name of the third person in the garden: senior cabinet minister Saville Ryerson. This distinguished public servant, whispered to be Ayesha’s lover, insists that she is as innocent as Pitt himself is. Pitt’s journey to uncover the truth takes him from Egyptian cotton fields to the insidious London slum called Seven Dials, to a packed London courtroom where shocking secrets will at last be revealed.

About this title

Review

London detective Thomas Pitt is investigating the murder of a junior diplomat by a notorious Egyptian woman and her lover, a senior Cabinet minister involved in negotiating the conflict between Egypt's cotton growers and England's textile industry. Lovat, the diplomat, once served in Egypt, and to unravel the mystery of his death, Pitt travels to Alexandria, where he finds that the beautiful Ayesha Zakhari is not who she appears to be--and that Lovat's murder may be tied to an old crime which, if exposed, could set the Middle East aflame. While Pitt is in Egypt, his wife, Charlotte, occupies herself with a more mundane matter--the disappearance of a valet whose sister is a friend of the Pitt's housemaid. It's not long before the reader realizes the connection between the two crimes; meanwhile, Perry layers this smoothly plotted mystery with a fascinating history of Egypt in the days of the British Empire and the religious and economic tensions whose repercussions still resonate more than a century later. Perry, the author of two Victorian-era series (the other stars investigator William Monk), does her usual fine job of bringing the colorful time period alive, helped along by the details of domestic life provided by her protagonists' wives, interesting and accomplished women who have lately played all but equal roles in solving their husbands' cases. --Jane Adams

From the Back Cover

“An Anne Perry novel is a delight to read as much for its Victorian-era details as for the mystery it unfolds.”
–Chicago Tribune

“A MASTER OF CRIME FICTION.”
–The Baltimore Sun


Praise for Anne Perry’s previous
Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novel
Southampton Row

“Compelling and provocative . . . Vintage Perry: a grand, sweeping mystery of manners.”
–Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

“Thought-provoking . . . [with] a mystery–a very good one–woven tightly in . . . Status, rights, love, and duty are hallmarks of Perry’s narratives. Here, they are brought into finer focus, allowing their inherent drama to carry the story forward.”
–Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“Delicious political treachery . . . [Perry’s] grasp of the economic and social forces of the period is masterly.”
–Chicago Sun-Times

“Perry skillfully explores the gap between the Victorians’ love of knowledge and their deepening suspicion that their way of life cannot continue.”
–The Boston Globe
AND HER VICTORIAN NOVELS

“Intelligently written and historically fascinating.”
–The Wall Street Journal

“You can count on a Perry tale to be superior.”
–San Diego Union-Tribune

“Few mystery writers this side of Arthur Conan Doyle can evoke Victorian London with such relish for detail and mood.”
–San Francisco Chronicle

“Perry can write a Victorian mystery that would make Dickens’s eyes pop.”
–The New York Times Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0345440072
• ISBN 13: 9780345440075
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352