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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
66 of 69 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Thomas Pitt book with a different star,
By
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This review is from: Buckingham Palace Gardens: A Novel (Charlotte & Thomas Pitt Novels) (Hardcover)
Firstly I would like to say I am a long time fan of Anne Perry - I have followed all of her series and appreciate her accuracy and attention to detail as she takes us into. Two of her series are placed in the Victorian Era.It is an earlier time with the Monk series, but with Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series, it is the waning days of the Victorian era - After Prince Albert died, Queen Victoria was almost a recluse in her grief and didn't execute her duties as she did. The Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series has always been charming because it features a working class man, a policeman, Thomas Pitt, who through a murder investigation met a gentry family, and one of their daughters, Charlotte, and they fall in love and marry. She has to adjust to doing her own chores, and he has guilty feelings he is depriving Charlotte with the luxuries she is accustomed to - But they are rich with the love and respect they have with each other. They have 2 children, and have a maid, a whisp of a young woman, Gracie Phipps, who helps them. She literally grows up in the Pitt household. The charm of this series is Mrs. Perry used all the adult characters to be involved in the mystery and resolution of it. But as Pitt has progressed from policeman to a member of Special Services, that cannot happen as readily. But this outing it is Gracie Phipps' time to shine. There has been a murder in Buckingham Palace. The Queen is away and the Prince of Wales and his buds are at play, in the guise of meeting to plan a railroad that will run the span of Africa...when the ladies go to bed, they have prostitutes come in to 'entertain' them. Something goes wrong and one of the girls is found in the laundry closet and is naked and gutted - blood all around the sheets - and the Queen's sheets to boot! With the sensitive nature of the crime, Narraway and Pitt are called in to find what happened and on the QT handle it. Charlotte, and her sister Emily cannot come on this type of investigation. They used to go in and glean facts and clues for him in social situations, and enlist help from Emily's great aunt in law Aunt Vespasia Cumming Gould - she is a jewel in this series - once was hailed as the most beautiful woman of her time, she is still beautiful in the winter of her life and loves to help them. But the only person who may be able to help in this Buckingham Palace mystery is Gracie Phipps - she is put undercover as a maid in the palace to see if she can find clues - servants in those days were just about invisible - they could be standing in back of guests dining and the guests treated them as if they weren't there - and the servants could hear a lot of juicy things... There are brief appearances by our friends, Charlotte, Emily, etc. But thank goodness, Narraway goes to Lady Vespasia for advise about the people involved in the murder investigation. Her part is too short, but much longer than our other friends we are accustomed to seeing in the Pitt books. The mystery is well layered with twists and turns, and Gracie learns that she is capable of helping Thomas. The difference in class is such a major factor - many of the servants even in the Palace cannot read - and they make a big deal that Gracie can read - and even read Oscar Wilde! Palace's resolution is handled well, and it is another excellent work by Perry - Hopefully Perry will give us more of our friends in the next Pitt book. But Perry continues to write true reflections of the time.
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not What I Expected from This Series,
By
This review is from: Buckingham Palace Gardens: A Novel (Charlotte & Thomas Pitt Novels) (Hardcover)
I have been reading this series since it began over 30 years ago. I know things have to move along and characters have to grow and develop, but frankly, I did not enjoy the 2/3 of the book with all those bored, self-interested, vapid upper crust folks. Ok, I get it, that is part of what the author is trying to show about the times and the repression in society...but I have enough unpleasantness in daily life that I don't want to extend it into my "pleasure" reading. All that angst over who loved whom who didn't love whom....In 2008 parlance, they soooo needed to get over themselves. The parts with Gracie were most enjoyable. I really missed Charlotte and the home front.......Hope the next in the series is better. Lately, there have been several authors whom I have been reading for 20+ years whose books just haven't grabbed/held my interest, and Anne Perry is one of them.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a deliciously engrossing read,
By tregatt (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Buckingham Palace Gardens: A Novel (Charlotte & Thomas Pitt Novels) (Hardcover)
Anne Perry delivers yet again with this deliciously perplexing Thomas Pitt installment, "Buckingham Palace Gardens."When one of the prostitutes hired to entertain the Prince of Wales and his four male companions is found butchered in a linen cupboard at Buckingham Palace, the Prince immediately summons the services of the Special Branch to clean up the mess and see that there is no scandal. And the police officer ordered to oversee such a miracle? None other than Thomas Pitt. Honest and with a strong sense of right and wrong, Pitt soon finds many of his cherished illusions about royalty sorely tested by developments in the case. But time is of the essence: the Queen is due back and the scandal must be death with before her return. And when Pitt's investigations reveal that the murderer can only be one of the Prince's friends, he quickly realises that he needs help ferreting out the truth about the rich and powerful. And so, while his superior, Narraway, flies around London using his contacts to find out more about the Prince's friends, Pitt enlists the help of his maid, Gracie, to discover the gossip "belowstairs" among the palace servants, never really anticipating the scope of conspiracy he would uncover and the effect it could have on his career... The disappointing part about "Buckingham Palace Gardens" is that Charlotte Pitt barely makes an appearance in this particular outing; I did miss her presence and the input that she could have provided this particular installment. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed "Buckingham Palace Gardens" and the manner in which Anne Perry used Gracie to act as Pitt's foil. As usual, the period details and ambiance were superb, and her character portrayals vivid and lifelike. At heart, the story-line was a deceptively simple one; but Perry did such a fantastic job of layering plot twist upon plot twist, that this seemingly simple mystery became an engagingly perplexing conundrum for Pitt and us to solve. If I had any criticism, it was that I didn't fully understand the reasons why one of the characters conspired against another -- but perhaps a rereading of the novel is in order. All in all, however, I'd say that "Buckingham Palace Gardens" was a delightfully engrossing read.
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