Where the Crime Gets Solved on Its Own

Paragon Walk by Anne Perry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Third book in the series. I liked it, but I wanted it to be better. Almost gave it a 3--3.5 is probably the closest score, the way I see it. But it costs nothing to round it up.

The series so far has followed this pattern: there's a crime (murder or murders) on a somewhat exclusive street that is connected in some way to the main character, Charlotte. (In the first novel, she marries the police detective, Mr. Pitt, and after that they work out murder mysteries together. Sort of.) Pitt interviews people on the street, getting alibis for the upper class people nearby as well as their servants. There's an expectation that the criminal lives among them, in one of six or seven or eight homes all close to one another. And that turns out to be true.

I was hoping that, by this third story, the inspector would be more impressive. He just asks questions and waits for something to come up. There is very little Sherlockian about him. Charlotte gets more involved, gathering intel in a sneaky way, usually, but she still doesn't get far. It still doesn't feel like they're actively solving mysteries, and that's why I am reluctant to give a more favorable review or rating. It feels like they're just hanging out long enough for the killer (or whatever) to reveal himself or herself.

That said, it's a fun read, in its way. There are terrible events, obviously, but it has a sort of novel-of-manners feel that is familiar and enjoyable. It's almost more than I can do to keep a bunch of minor characters straight, but that's exactly how these novels are, just like in Agatha Christie or any other mystery writer of that sort. It's meant to read like a puzzle, and the reader is responsible for keeping stuff straight. I'm still working on that.

I wrote and deleted a whole paragraph discussing my feelings about the way SA was treated in this book, and I'm gonna skip that. Let me just say that the tone is not as good as it could be, even when considering the Victorian setting and the era when the author was writing.

The story move pretty quickly and the ending was both interesting and satisfying. It's a good mystery and a decent thriller.

Generally recommended for mystery readers, with the obvious exceptions.

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