MIDNIGHT AT MARBLE ARCH, by Anne Perry

26/series. If you haven't gotten hooked on the best-selling adventures, trials, tribulations and upsets of Charlotte and Thomas Pitt, you've got a golden opportunity to mend your ways. Start with #1, The Cater Street Hangman, and you'll have seasons of satisfaction, ending (for the moment) with this darkly colorful tale. Perry always selects an aspect of Victorian culture not generally talked about. In past novels, it's been child prostitution, pornography, and other ills. This time, her theme is rape, and both victims and perpetrators are members of the upper class, the movers and shakers of London. Pitt, now elevated to Head of Special Branch, moves in the world his wife was born to, knowing it's not his world but one he must master to succeed. His predecessor, Lord Victor Narraway, is drawn into the affair, as is the supremely elegant Lady Vespasia Cuming-Gould. Well, no spoilers here, so you'll have to either pick up this latest or start from the beginning and enjoy these highly-detailed tales of life, love, death and scandal in the Victorian world. It's a 4.
www.anneperry.co.uk

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