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List Price: $25.00 | | Publisher: Ballantine Books
Salesrank: 1156570
Released: April 4, 2000 |
| Our Price: $0.01 |
| Used Price: $0.01 |
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| Media: Hardcover |
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Editorial Review:
Like her literary forebear Charles Dickens, acclaimed author Anne Perry intrigues us with intricate plots propelled by vivid characters and the dark pleasures of Victorian London. Now, with Half Moon Street, Perry delivers another stunning novel enriched by the color of that matchless era: horses' hooves on cobblestone, fashionable drawing rooms where tea and scandal are served steaming hot, bedrooms whose secrets are seldom revealed, the strong beat of life in the world's most magnificent city.
Superintendent Thomas Pitt cannot immediately ascertain exactly what segment of society the dead man riding the morning tide of the Thames came from, but the sight of him is unforgettable. He lies in a battered punt drifting through the morning mist, his arms and legs chained to the boat's sides. He is clad in a torn green gown and flowers bestrew his battered body.
Is he, as Pitt fears, a French diplomat who has gone missing? Or merely someone who greatly resembles him? Pitt's determined search for answers leads him deep into London's bohemia to the theatre where beautiful Cecily Antrim is outraging society with her bold portrayal of a modern woman-- and into studios where masters of light and shadow are experimenting with the fascinating new art of photography.
But only Pitt's most relentless pursuit enables him to identify the wildfire passions raging through this tragedy of good and evil, to hunt down the guilty and protect the innocent.
Once again, Anne Perry asks us to look deeply into the crimes of heart--and rewards us a fresh and brilliant portrait of the engrossing world that she has long since made her own.
Description of Half Moon Street (Charlotte & Thomas Pitt Novels):
Secrets and lies, calumnies and evasions: in Anne Perry's Victorian mysteries, these elements, rather than a hat or gloves, a bustle or a watch fob, are the usual accoutrements of refined ladies and gentlemen. Half Moon Street marks the return of Inspector Thomas Pitt (20 novels now, beginning with The Cater Street Hangman and still going strong) to the cobblestoned streets and elegant drawing rooms of 19th-century London.
The inhabitants of those drawing rooms aren't usually thrilled to see him, because he always comes bearing bad news. This time, a body has turned up in a boat on the Thames: Delbert Cathcart, a talented portrait photographer with a taste for blackmail. Clad in a velvet dress, wrists manacled, legs spread grotesquely, skull crushed, Cathcart reminds Pitt of a perverse echo of the Lady of Shalott, or perhaps a debased Ophelia. Which of Cathcart's clients could have been pushed so far as to retaliate in such hideous fashion?
Pitt's official investigation is usually combined with another more idiosyncratic approach to the crime; this secondary analysis gives Perry free rein to dissect the manners and morals of Victorian society. In Half Moon Street, the genteel inquisition falls to Caroline Fielding, Charlotte's mother (Charlotte, who must need a bit of rest after so many outings, has been packed off to Paris for a vacation; her presence in the book is restricted to letters marveling, rather tediously, at the scandalous iniquities of the Moulin Rouge dance hall). Perry's readers will no doubt remember that Caroline scandalized society by marrying a much younger actor, Joshua. Half Moon Street introduces Caroline to his theatrical world, and to Cecily Antrim, a beautiful actress with liberal politics. Cecily poses both a personal and philosophical threat to Caroline, who is disturbed by her willingness to expose the realities of female sexuality on stage: "Should such things be said? Was there something indecent in the exposure of feelings so intimate? To know it herself was one thing, to realize that others also knew was quite different. It was being publicly naked rather than privately." This fear of exposure resonates through the worlds of theatrical and photographic art, as actors, diplomats, and genteel citizens race to hide their secrets from Pitt and Caroline.
While Perry evokes the London atmosphere with her usual skill, her narrative lacks its usual finesse. Rather than balancing Pitt's and Caroline's investigation, the novel lurches between them so that it seems all too often that Perry, in pursuit of one story, has forgotten the other. Additionally, Caroline's reaction to feminist politics and sexuality is inexplicably repetitive; her turgid expressions of horror seem the result of an overly eager copy-and-paste procedure. One hopes that this is a momentary lapse in an otherwise solid series. --Kelly Flynn
Half Moon Street (Charlotte & Thomas Pitt Novels) Reviews:
Good rainy night read 
2008-07-17 - If you like classic British mysteries, this is a good choice. You expect a good read from Anne Perry, this does not disappoint.
Waaaaay too preachy -- and morally indefensible, too. 
2008-03-25 - "All right, boys and girls, the social issue for today's Superintendent Pitt mystery novel is censorship!" Yeah, Perry has to include a problem of conscience for the characters to address in every book she writes, whether it's economic inequality, loan-sharking, the vote for women, or -- in this case -- whether censorship and freedom of speech is a good thing because it protects people from the ugliness in the world, or whether it's a bad thing because it results in intellectual and social stagnation. She can't quite seem to make up her mind, either. Oh, there's a story in here, too, about a prominent society photographer found grotesquely dead, posed like Ophelia in a dress and chains in a small boat on the Thames. Also prominent in the story, for a change, is Caroline, mother of Charlotte and Emily (both of whom are in Paris for a few weeks and who therefore do not appear in this book at all), who has remarried to a Jewish actor seventeen years her junior, and whose life style has loosened up a good deal as a result. That brings in the theater, and you know how liberal and undependable those theater people can be. I admit it, this 20th entry in a generally enjoyable series irritated me considerably. Thomas and/or Charlotte generally have served as mouthpieces for the author's own opinions, which is okay, but here they fulminate against things that have been proved factually inaccurate -- such as the notion that "pornography" (defined as anything those in power don't like) destroys society. Photos that Pitt considers sickening and obscene would be rated no worse than PG-13 in today's world -- and present-day society certainly is demonstrably superior, socially and politically, to that of 1890. I guess I don't understand how any professional novelist could have anything good to say about elitist governmental censorship.
Where was Charlotte? 
2006-02-05 - As a fan of Anne Perry's Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series, I was greatly dissapointed by this book.
Firstly, the murder plot was boring and obvious and the mistaken identity "twist" was nonsensical.
Secondly, the absence of Charlotte Pitt was much missed. She was vacationing in Paris with her sister Emily in this installment. Charlotte is usually a central character in the books and without her this novel fell flat.
Thirdly, the focus on Thomas' mother in law and grandmother in law was too much. They are usually perimiter characters and they did not mesh with what we had learned about them in previous books.
Overall, the character format of this novel was not as enjoyable as Ms. Perry's other books from this series.
Come back Charlotte!!!
Heavy-handed 
2005-05-29 - If you are a fan of Anne Perry's novels, this is not the review to read. This was the first book I have read by her, and I doubt there will be another.
A man is murdered and the crime is solved, but the mystery is not the true focus of this book. If I began telling you that a man was found dead in a boat dressed as a woman, in a pose that the other characters clearly judged to be obscene, and Pitt spent his time figuring out who did it, I would mislead you. This is not what you will spend most of your time reading about.
Pitt does begin investigating, then he goes to the theatre where we are introduced to a subplot: the changing role of women in Victorian society. Ideas clash, and we are supposed to be excited about it. I was still interested at this point.
Then we have "ideas in practice" for three or four chapters, where the book turns into a soap opera about the dark secrets of private life in Victorian England, which, of course, can only mean one thing: sex. The reader's appetite is whetted for unspeakable family secrets on the part of Mariah, the mother-in-law of Pitt's mother-in-law, Caroline. The relationship between Mariah and Caroline is worth some attention, and Caroline's struggle - as the book's moral focus - to find her way in the confusion of old and new ideas is sympathetic. However, I was fast losing interest when chapter after chapter all we had was foreshadowing something really interesting that failed to come. When it did, it wasn't that interesting, but at least the characters were shocked to the core.
Meanwhile, the murder plot blossoms into a treatise on censorship, with an emphasis on the censorship of pornographic material and a foray into the emergence of photography. The characters are used as carriers of ideas, and only that, which makes them one-dimensional and uninteresting. They regularly break into dreadfully long monologues until we reach the climax of the book, where the ideas - dressed as the two central female characters - clash and we find out who the author thought was right. By this time, I was thoroughly bored.
This could have been an interesting book. Ideas are not uninteresting, but it is the experience of people's lives that gives them richness and texture. Even in a mystery, plot and character must come before the moral of the story.
A changing world... 
2003-07-15 - Excellent entry in the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series, with Pitt trying to solve the mystery of a man found dead and drifting in a punt on the Thames River. Pitt is more on his own in this book, and Charlotte does not figure as prominently as before, but I did not see that as a drawback. Pitt's investigations take him to the bohemian parts of London, to the world of the theater. Pitt's search for the truth, along with help from Charlotte, shows us how the world is changing, from the Victorian to the modern.
