A BREACH OF PROMISE
By Anne Perry
Fawcett Columbine, $25
In an early moment in “A Breach of Promise,” Anne Perry’s deeply moving, thought-provoking and completely satisfying new William Monk mystery set in Victorian London, lawyer Oliver Rathbone is at a fancy society party, surrounded by eager young women. “A girl who did not make a fortunate impression in her first season was in perilous shape, and if she had not found a husband by her second, could be written off as a disaster,” he muses. Seconds later he overhears two older women gossiping about a friend. ” `You don’t mean she divorced him, do you? Whatever for?’ ” When told it was because her husband beat her, the first woman replies, ” `I suppose it was worth it . . . but a terribly bad example.’ “
Between these two poles of desperation lie the lives of most women in Victorian England, seen here through the clear, cool but definitely compassionate eyes of Perry and her dour detective. Young Zillah Lambert–daughter of a wealthy, well-meaning provincial businessman and his socially ambitious wife–is suing an immensely gifted architect, Killian Melville, for failing to live
up to his promise of marriage and thereby ruining her chances of making any sort of acceptable match. Private detective Monk is brought into the case by Rathbone when his client, Melville, although facing financial and social ruin, still refuses to offer any reason for his dastardly conduct. Evidence is turned up, a suicide follows, a shocking suprise shakes everyone’s composure.
Other storylines tangle and combine, and Perry keeps us on the edge of our socially conscious seats as she shows us the many prices women were made to pay for their places in a male-dominated society.
MANNEQUIN
By J. Robert Janes
Soho, $22
In a deserted luxury apartment near the Palais Royal in Paris, two detectives stare in horror at an array of photographs left behind, some of them showing the terrorized face and exposed body of an 18-year-old woman whose mother takes in the laundry of their neighbor, Chief Inspector Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the Surete Nationale. It is just after Christmas 1942; the two teenage sons of St-Cyr’s partner, Gestapo Inspector Hermann Kohler, are among the Wermacht troops being slaughtered in the siege of Stalingrad. Yet high on each detective’s list of concerns is also the well-being of the other.
But things and people keep getting in the way in this fourth installment of Robert Janes’ memorable series, and among them is a top Nazi official, Hermann Goering. He is in Paris on an art-looting mission that crosses paths with an investigation by Kohler and St-Cyr into a bank robbery and the murders of several young women who answered an ad to become fashion models. Ghosts of wars past also haunt the story: One of the suspects is a man badly mutilated in World War I.
In hundreds of subtle ways, Janes shows the twisted idiocy of the times through the eyes and lives of his two cops. In a starving country robbed and raped by experts, high fashion and art collecting still flourish. St-Cyr, his family destroyed in a bomb blast, lives with a singer who has Resistance ties. But this most patriotic of Frenchmen faces death from a strengthened Resistance because of his perceived collaboration with the German occupiers. Kohler supports and protects two French women, and thereby puts them in danger. Always at odds with his Gestapo superiors, Kohler also needs their help in his investigations. When he faces down Goering at an art auction, it seems as much an act of suicidal madness as one of moral strength.
“Mannequin” begins just as the equally impressive “Salamander” ends, and there are indications of the next Kohler-St-Cyr adventure, “Dollmaker,” in its last pages. Along with Janes’ “Sandman” and “Stonekiller,” these books make up a series as real and tragically resonant as anything ever written about a world at war.
VERDICT IN BLOOD
By Gail Bowen
McClelland & Stewart, $20.95
Read any good Canadian mysteries lately? You should, especially this latest entry in Gail Bowen’s series about Joanne Kilbourn. She’s an original and immensely appealing character: a 51-year-old professor of political science, broadcaster, mother (and about to be a grandmother), lover and amateur crime solver based in Regina, Saskatchewan. Bowen has supplied such a convincing array of details about her family and friends and the landscape they inhabit that we slip into Kilbourn’s life as easily as walking next door.
The plot of this sixth book in the series is also about family and friends. When a tough judge, Justine Blackwell, suddenly softens up after 30 years on the bench and begins to vocally and financially support a group that helps former convicts, attacks from her three angry daughters make her doubt her own mental competence. Blackwell turns to an elderly teacher and mentor, Hilda McCourt, for advice. McCourt is staying with her friend Kilbourn when they both get the news that Blackwell has been battered to death in a public park. The ex-prisoners (and especially their explosive leader) seem to have reasons to want Blackwell dead, but so do two of the daughters–a former rock/folk star and a psychiatrist with a tarnished reputation.
Helping McCourt sift the evidence, and then having to deal with another brutal attack, Kilbourn is also caught up in the psychological problems of the fragile 15-year-old nephew of her policeman lover. It’s a lot of weight for one small book to bear, but Bowen keeps it all moving with a seamless blend of honest emotion and artistry.
