Callander Square [Paperback]

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (1980)
• ASIN: B001QHICE2
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,930,489 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Anne Perry is the bestselling author of two acclaimed series set in Victorian England: the William Monk novels, including Dark Assassin and The Shifting Tide, and the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novels, including The Cater Street Hangman, Calandar Square, Buckingham Palace Gardens and Long Spoon Lane. She is also the author of the World War I novels No Graves As Yet, Shoulder the Sky, Angels in the Gloom, At Some Disputed Barricade, and We Shall Not Sleep, as well as six holiday novels, most recently A Christmas Grace. Anne Perry lives in Scotland.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another pager-turner from Anne Perry!, March 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Callander Square (Mass Market Paperback)

This is the second in the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series. I started reading it as soon as I had finished The Cater Street Hangman (the first)! Inspector Pitt is now married to his Charlotte and they make a delightful couple. Although pregnant with their first child, Charlotte does some detecting of her own in this case, helped by her well-to-do sister, Emily. The plot is excellent and the characters are very well-drawn. The strict rules regarding class which most of the Victorian upper-class people in this book feel compelled to follow appear somewhat laughable to us in this more enlightened age but are very destructive for all that! I could not put this book down until I knew whodunnit and I was quite a way through it before I guessed the culprit! A wonderful read!

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Enjoy the mystery!, March 20, 2001

By 

Triton Sky (New England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Callander Square (Mass Market Paperback)

This is the second book in Anne Perry's mystery series involving Charlotte and Inspector Pitt. But note, reading the first in the series, "The Cater Street Hangman" is not a requirement to understanding and enjoying "Callandar Square." Perry seems to have foreseen this issue and wrote the books in this series without any prerequisites. (Obviously, if one can read the books in order, than that's terrific too!) The story, as do most of Perry's works, is set in Victorian England. Perry is so natural in description of places, people and customs of this era, one wonders if she doesn't own a time-machine. In the mystery, two bodies of babies are found buried in the well-to-do, respectable neighborhood of Callandar Square. Rumors abound on who they were and who was the mother. Naturally, the well-born classes dismiss it as the desperate act of a chambermaid or some other lowly working-class girl. But when Inspector Thomas Pitt puts his sleuthing wits to the matter that assumption doesn't seem so easy. The Inspector has recently married Charlotte, who is from an established family. Those in their society may have seen the marriage as unprofitable for her, but Charlotte married for love. Charlotte is a delight with her brains and attitudes, and is ever so likable. She is a woman ahead of her times. Charlotte, through some scheming with her high-society sister, takes up a clerical position in one of the aristocratic homes in Callandar Square as an attempt to uncover any secrets about the discovered bodies. An array of concealments and hush-hush information unfolds as Pitt, Charlotte, and Charlotte's sister begin to delve into the lives of the residents of Callandar Square. There are surprises and heartbreaks as the killer is finally cornered. Perry's skill of dialogue is excellent as the reader learns intimately the attitudes of the various characters. The ending seems a little quick in the realization of the killer, but Perry makes up for it with a touching reflection that Pitt ponders in the final pages. Other readers of this series have suggested they wish there was more dialogue and action between Pitt and Charlotte together. Perhaps feeling a little spoiled from "Cater Street." But I see this as a compliment to Perry, not a fault. The characters so well drawn and their charms when together in a chapter, so relishing, that it will always leave one wanting more. Yet, there are only so many opportunities for a dual appearance in this particular plot. If Perry wrote anymore, it may have seemed forced. But fear not, there are plenty of Charlotte and Pitt books to get happily lost in. And "Callandar Square" was one of them for me.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Appearances Matter in This Victorian Novel of Hidden Sexual Sins, July 29, 2005

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Callander Square (Mass Market Paperback)

Those who like to pillory the Victorians do so for their application of a double standard, licentiousness in private while appearing spotlessly upright in public. Callander Square is a powerful commentary on that double standard, as the story strips away the cloaks of respectability among neighbors in an upper class neighborhood.

Upper class lives were then seldom examined . . . except by ladies who were gossiping. When two dead babies are found by accident buried in Callander Square, it becomes Inspector Thomas Pitts' duty to examine all of those lives . . . looking for who the mother was. Pitts' theory is that if you can find the mother, you can find the murderer . . . or the circumstances of death if it wasn't murder.

The wealthy men and women in the square do their best to fend off Pitt by focusing him on their servants. Unsuspected by them, Pitts' wife, Charlotte, decides that she wants to find the mother too . . . but to succor rather than to accuse her. Charlotte and her sister Emily play an undercover role in which Emily is the Upstairs mole and Charlotte is the Downstairs mole. Soon, the skeletons are rattling in all the relevant closets. And crimes multiply!

This mystery presents an interesting problem. How do you investigate when all the "good" people either won't talk to you . . . or lie when they do? These people are so delicate that they won't even come out and discuss their concerns. One has to hint around . . . and hope that the message is received and understood. So there's a dance of manners involved here inside of a mystery which is inside of a dysfunctional society. For those who like novels of manners, there is much to enjoy here in addition to the mystery.

I give Ms. Perry great credit for hiding the villains until late in the book. You will know in the last 80 pages or so who did what, but it's a totally incomprehensible mystery before then. If she had shortened up the end a bit, I would have graded the book higher. But the climax is more like a tea party that's gone on too long than a climax until the last few pages.

The writing is superb. A large number of characters are fully developed, and the development is used well to advance the plot.