Defend and Betray [Paperback]

Anne Perry (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Fawcett Columbine; Uncorrected Proof edition (1992)
• ASIN: B000SF4PZ8
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,096,568 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

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Uneven but worthwhile, May 21, 2002

By 

Eve Starr (San Antonio, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Defend and Betray (William Monk Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)

Anne Perry charmed me with the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series first. I imagine Thomas to be very much like Mulder from the X-Files. Anyway, I made the mistake of reading one of the later Monk novels out of desperation for more Anne Perry, and just plain lost interest. Then, I found "Face of a Stranger" and started the series in order, and can picture Timothy Dalton as Monk, Hester Latterly as Emma Thompson, and I care so much about these main characters that even when the pace got mired down in Monk's flashbacks, I had the motivation to keep going. It's worth it in this most unusual approach. I highly appreciate Ms. Perry's respect for her readers; there is a definite level of erudition here without becoming pedantic. As a teacher, I recommend these books as great historical fiction, with plenty of insight on the lower classes and the plight of women. Stick around for the exquisite courtroom scene. Oliver Rathbone is a well-balanced, realistic character, and his father Henry is a dear. Callandra Daviot is as important to the Monk novels as Aunt Vespasia is to the Pitt series. To sum up: start at the beginning of each series to get the most out of them. They don't stand alone nearly as well as some series novels.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Considerably below her usual standard, June 3, 2001

By 

Stan Vernooy (Henderson, NV) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Defend and Betray (William Monk Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)

The plot outline is this: A well-respected army general is murdered during a dinner party at the home of a friend. Soon his wife confesses to the crime, giving jealousy as her motive. Edith, the younger sister of the deceased general, is skeptical of the confession, and approaches her friend Hester for some help. Hester, in turn, enlists the famed attorney Oliver Rathbone and former Inspector William Monk to work on the case.

The first 250 pages are so boring and so empty that one wonders why Perry wrote the book at all. All three of the above-mentioned investigators go out to gather information and interview the witnesses and acquaintances of the principal parties. They find absolutely nothing. It soon becomes clear that the wife is lying about her motive, but everyone is mystified as to what the real motive is. So for 250 pages we get almost nothing except conversations among the three people, exchanging no information because there is no information to exchange, and becoming increasingly pessimistic about their chances to save the wife from being hanged.

A modern reader, on the other hand, has no trouble figuring out the wife's motive long before the people in the book do. So that element of suspense is missing. The only open question in the reader's mind is exactly how are the characters in the book going to find out the motive.

Not only are the first 250 pages excruciatingly boring, but also the book is poorly edited. There are several threads in the story which are confusing, and several times people do things, or omit doing things, for which the motivation is either nonexistent or poorly explained.

One of the subplots is Monk's emotional longing to reconstruct a case which this one reminds him of, but which he can't remember because of a head injury which impaired his memory. That previous case might have been in one of the prior Monk novels that I haven't read, but the entire subplot is just an annoyance and seems out of place in this novel.

So what's good about this novel? The last 100 pages. Once we get to the courtroom, Perry's writing suddenly becomes far more powerful and surehanded. The drama builds, and even though the reader knows all the facts by now, it is highly uncertain how the whole thing will play out during the trial. Rathbone (and therefore Perry) does a masterful job of sequencing the witnesses, the questions, and the testimony. The final ending is moving and satisfying.

Is the truly fine ending worth wading through the 250 pages of dross that precede it? Probably not. This is my fourth Anne Perry novel, and I know she can do much better than this. Read the others.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More psychological study than mystery, August 9, 2006

By 

Marauder The Slash Nymph "Spawn of a Library" (sometimes MN, sometimes MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Defend and Betray (William Monk Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)

Although not the book for you if you want one that keeps you guessing about the murderer until the end, Defend and Betray remains captivating because of its focus on Victorian society and the increasingly complicated inner workings of the Carlyon and Furnival families. I figured out why the murderer had killed Thaddeus Carlyon a few hundred pages before the detectives did, but I think this is due to a modern perspective rather than their incompetence.

A few parts of this book drove me crazy. At one point, Monk and Hester have learned an important piece of information that should easily, EASILY lead them to a further conclusion, Victorian society or no Victorian society, and yet it takes some time for them to connect A and B. The middle section of the novel in which Alexandra Carlyon refuses to tell them anything more about the murder grows frustrating, but once Monk and Hester have broken past her silence, the book is spellbinding until the end. I stayed up until midnight finishing it. Even as questions are answered, there are always some left until the final page.

Whether you care about the subplot with Monk and his half-hidden memory of another woman accused of killing her husband depends on if you care about Monk in the first place (I do) and if you resent time being taken away from the main case (I did).

It has some flaws, but overall I found this book page-turning and an interesting take on the secrets, lies, and priorities of upper-class Victorians.