by Anne Perry
Another of the Pitt mysteries, a series set mainly in Victorian London with its main characters being an Inspector and his wife solving crimes together. The 7th book I have read this year was also from this series; you can find my review here.
This one was capturing, with the story, dialogue and descriptions of places and people all in the familiar style of Anne Perry. "Seven Dials" is the name of an area in London that, during the time the story is set, was a notorious slum with terrible living conditions. Actually, it doesn't have all that much to do with the story; the investigation leads Charlotte Pitt to Seven Dials only twice in the entire book. But I looked it up nonetheless and found a wikipedia entry about it here.
As usual with cases that Thomas Pitt has to solve, a murder takes place within the ranks of high society, and everything about it is puzzling - circumstances, motive, suspects. This time, a man is found dead at 3:00 in the morning in the garden of a house within a quiet, well-to-do neighbourhood.
The occupant of the house is an Egyptian lady, and not only has the man been shot with what she confirms to be her gun, but she is also caught trying to transport the body to a more public place, at the same time claiming that she didn't do it and found the man dead when she came out after she heard the shot. This makes her the obvious suspect, and her motive could lie in the past or present - many years ago, the man served as a soldier in Egypt, and the two of them were in a relationship. Now apparently he wanted to rekindle the old flame, while she had long moved on and was in love with a wealthy, widowed politician.
In Pitt's cases, nothing is ever as straight forward as it seems, and this one is no exception. To cut a long story short, Pitt has to travel to Alexandria - his first time abroad ever - while his wife and her trusted maid keep investigating in London, with the help of Aunt Vespasia (who, I am sure, is one of the best-loved characters in the series, not only for me).
In the end, the trip to Egypt is helpful, but the case is solved only in the court room where the jury has gathered to give their verdict on the Egyptian lady and her lover.
As I said, it was a good read. I only found it a bit irritating that there was hardly a paragraph without anyone stiffening, clenching their jaws or their fists, and showing all sorts of physical expressions of mental stress. It was really getting a bit much, and took away a little of what would have otherwise been a thoroughly good read.
What I really like about these novels (I may have mentioned this before) is the way Anne Perry depicts domestic life. She really must have done a great deal of research about how a household was run in Victorian times, how people cooked, washed, cleaned, mended clothes and so on. Also, in this one I enjoyed the trip to Alexandria - what a fascinating place it must have been back then! I have never been to Egypt, and of course nowadays it will be very different, but it almost made me want to go and see it for myself.
I am sure this was not my last "Pitt" mystery!
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