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A review by suzannalundale
A Sudden, Fearful Death by Anne Perry
5.0
Anne Perry's work has always had the admirable, if uncomfortable, quality of historical honesty that nearly all (including my own) Victorian historicals lack. The sheer impotence of most people, and the crushing injustice, are hardly the escape detective fiction usually is. And yet, for the historian, who loves the period for all its wild paradoxes, it really is quite remarkable.
Perry must share with me a delicious sense of the perverse that would lead us to instantly like or loathe each other. She took the precaution, early on in this series, to have an innocent man hanged- largely due to the convenience of his low station - while the protagonist and his friends raced to find the truth. They did, eventually, but the poor footman was no less dead for all that the truth of fratricide tearing apart an aristocratic family brought a different sort of justice to the actual killer. By hanging that footman, Perry accomplished what few mystery writers can do - I can never trust her to spare the innocent, and hang only the guilty. (Was Perry consciously checking our privilege before we knew to use the terminology? I rather hope so.) It gives the reader one more way to experience the chest-clenching fear of injustice and powerlessness that our Victorian counterparts enjoyed. Brava.
Perry must share with me a delicious sense of the perverse that would lead us to instantly like or loathe each other. She took the precaution, early on in this series, to have an innocent man hanged- largely due to the convenience of his low station - while the protagonist and his friends raced to find the truth. They did, eventually, but the poor footman was no less dead for all that the truth of fratricide tearing apart an aristocratic family brought a different sort of justice to the actual killer. By hanging that footman, Perry accomplished what few mystery writers can do - I can never trust her to spare the innocent, and hang only the guilty. (Was Perry consciously checking our privilege before we knew to use the terminology? I rather hope so.) It gives the reader one more way to experience the chest-clenching fear of injustice and powerlessness that our Victorian counterparts enjoyed. Brava.