THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, April 24, 1996 TAG: 9604240026
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY DOUGLAS G. GREENE
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
IN READING AN Anne Perry mystery, one is never certain whether her subject is the Victorian era - its events, sights, sounds and smells - or today's social and gender relationships. As ``Pentecost Alley,'' her 16th novel about Thomas and Charlotte Pitt, demonstrates, she has mastered both emphases - though they do not always sit comfortably together.
I should begin by saying that ``Pentecost Alley'' is difficult to put down. Perry's writing is descriptive, evocative and always precise. She vividly describes the settings, from the squalor of a brothel in the slums, to the elegance of an upper-class flower show. She is compelling in creating characters, especially a young woman who changes from a social butterfly to a woman concerned with the plight of the poor. The mystery plot, moreover, is tricky and beautifully paced.
Inspector Thomas Pitt has been called into the case of a prostitute brutally murdered in the Whitechapel area of London. Normally, the local police would have handled the investigation, but London still recalls the terror of 1888 when Jack the Ripper roamed Whitechapel. In addition, the crime may be more than a local murder, for a badge reading ``Hellfire Club'' with the name of Finlay Fitzjames, the scion of a powerful family, has been found in the victim's bed.
Pitt must tread warily to avoid another Ripper-panic, and he must arrest the right person before Fitzjames' father calls the wrath of the establishment down on him. It seems possible that another member of the Hellfire Club might have left the badge, or that an unknown person has attempted to frame Fitzjames, perhaps for revenge against the young man's ruthless father.
Eventually, both the slum dwellers and the establishment breathe a sign of relief when Pitt finds evidence to convict someone of the victim's own class. Almost immediately after the execution, however, another prostitute is murdered in exactly the same way - and evidence also links Fitzjames with this second killing. Did Pitt make a tragic error in the first case? Is someone using him like a puppet for an unknown purpose? Are the two crimes genuinely connected, or has coincidence intervened?
Pitt starts the investigation again, but rumors spread that the authorities invented evidence to save one of their own class from the gallows. Pitt is almost killed by an angry mob before he finally discovers the truth. The solution, in a detective-story sense, is excellent, with many twists before a cleverly hidden culprit is revealed - and the shocking final scene is immensely satisfying.
Perry wants to do more than talk about the London of 1890, however. She is concerned with problems that still exist today: prostitution, the pernicious influence of class and establishment, and the connection between gender and authority.
When, in ``Pentecost Alley,'' Perry describes a clergyman who has deserted his aristocratic roots to minister to the poor, she accurately reflects the growing social consciousness of late Victorian England. But when almost every positive character in the book decries the subordinate position of women, one is left with the uncomfortable feeling that Perry anachronistically puts 1990s thoughts into the minds of people of a very different era.
But if it makes people of our times think about social and gender roles, I am willing to forgive any anachronism. MEMO: Douglas G. Greene, director of the Institute of Humanities at Old
Dominion University, is the author of the Edgar Award-nominated ``John
Dickson Carr: The Man Who Explained Miracles.''
by CNB