Customer Reviews

Rutland Place: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel (Mortalis)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

About in the middle of this 5th book in Perry's series (although I read it as the 6th book, it is the 5th book) I was feeling a bit bored with all the trouble Charlotte and her family seemed to be getting into. It felt like a soap opera and the circle of people and incidents just kept getting smaller and THEN it picked up and I truly enjoyed the ending. This time Perry had me fooled all the way to the end.
The book was more involved around Charlotte than Pitt, which I enjoyed. I like that Perry focuses on one or the other in each of her books.
All said and done, I'm glad I read it and will continue on to her next book. Stay tuned...

Anne Perry's mystery stories are notable for their immense wealth of detail about Victorian England. Her investigative team is Charlotte Pitt, a young woman from a family of means, and her husband, Inspector Thomas Pitt. Because their marriage stretches across the British class gap, the two of them often combine to provide discoveries and insights that one or the other might have missed on their own. And, of course, the detailing of the stratified society that was London at that time is an anglophile's delight.

The mystery begins innocently enough. Charlotte's mother Caroline has lost a locket with an embarrassing enclosure, and she has asked Charlotte to look into it for her. As they visit the other residents of Rutland Place they discover that many other items have also been stolen, and that many secrets lurk beneath the refined surface. Suddenly the game deepens and Wilhelmina Spencer-Brown, a resident with a habit of prying, dies of poison. The police, in the person of Thomas Pitt investigate, but the walls of the upper class are difficult hurdles to negotiate.

Charlotte, anxious to protect her mother from further embarrassment, joins in the investigation. Between her and Thomas the clues gradually accumulate, but with excruciating slowness. Dishonesty, flirtation, and things far worse gradually come to the surface until a second murder attempt triggers the final tragedy. The crime and its bitter aftermath stand revealed, and we are reminded that often things are not what they seem.

I like Perry's stories for their careful attention to detail and method. They are just complicated enough, and hard work is an important part of reaching the solution. My complaint is that the books are often too dry, even when there is pressing emotional content. To a degree this reflects the restraint of the times Perry writes about. Rutland Place proceeds ever slowly, with no whirls of dramatic action to light a fire under it. Yet it manages to affect the reader with it's chilling vision of the dark corners of 'bright' society.

Almost to the end before I began to suspect the murder. Typical Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novel, with much insight into Victorian England foibles.

Rutland Place is one of the most successful of Anne Perry's novels about Thomas and Charlotte Pitt. The mystery encompasses Charlotte's family which gives the events more immediacy for the reader who has been going through all of the novels, and the nuances of the Victorian withdrawing room have never been better portrayed by Ms. Perry. In addition, the misdirection away from the evil doers and what they did works pretty well in this one.

As the story opens, Charlotte finds that her mother is distraught over the loss of a locket. Originally, her mother explains this distress as being concern because her mother-in-law gave her the locket as a gift. But later, Charlotte finds out that there's a powerful personal reason for getting that locket back. In the backdrop, it soon becomes apparent that others have lost small items of jewelry. Since the losses have occurred in many houses, it cannot be one of the servants . . . it must be "the quality" behind it. But what's the motive?

The mystery develops into a murder investigation when a woman dies in a way that can hardly be an accident . . . or suicide. But who did it? And why? And how is the lost locket involved?

The book's main weakness is that the locket story line doesn't quite carry off its initial promise.

If you've run out of novels that you enjoy about Victorians and their mannerly evasions, you'll enjoy this one.

Anne Perry has been one of my favorite authors for many, many years. I was delighted to see that the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series is available on Kindle. However, as I am re-reading the old favorites, I am very disappointed by the poor reproduction quality of the entire series. Many words are misspelled through obvious optical character recognition errors. The price of each book warrants at least a proofread of the content. My rating is based on this issue; a review of the writing and storyline would be much, much higher.

Rutland Place, by Anne Perry, is the fifth novel in the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt mystery series.

If you enjoy Victorian mysteries with a dark surprise at the end, you will love this book. Even though you may be tempted to do so, don't peek.

The story begins when Caroline, Charlotte's mother, asks for her daughter's help in finding a locket that she cannot find. The mystery deepens when a resident of Rutland Place dies under suspicious circumstances and the subplot involving Caroline and her missing locket interleaves with the darker mystery of death and something else, the secrets at the heart of the lives of the residents. The plot is intricate, the characters absorbing. The end, as is often the case with Perry's novels, is a surprise, and a heavy one, as Charlotte peels away the dark secrets of this upper class neighborhood.

Anne Perry has an unrivaled sense of the Victorian age, its rituals, its taboos, its hypocrisy, and rigid class rules and presents an unrivaled sense of place, including all strata of Victorian society in the scenes and characters of the Pitt series of historical mysteries. (fyi the Pitt series starts with The Cater Street Hangman. In its opening pages, there's a reference to the death of Disraeli, 1881. The latest, Treason at Lisson Grove takes place in 1895.)

This is yet another example of Anne Perry's fabulous detectives. Anyone who loves a good mystery would most certainly enjoy this author.

I decided to start this series at the beginning having read so many wonderful reviews of the books and thinking I would have a great time and many fun hours working my way through the numerous volumes devoted to the crimes being solved by the Pitts.
I am SO disappointed! These books are repetitive to the nth degree and in my opinion, Charlotte does not get nearly enough word play.
The settings are so far always the same few, upper-class neighborhoods and the characters are the same haughty, annoyed, uncooperative snobs.
Over and over and no one can ever remember Thomas Pitt's name because as a policeman he is SO beneath them.
I know Anne Perry is a very successful writer and certainly has no cause to listen to me, but I wish she had utilized more of the "Oliver Twist" world, the time period in which this series is set, developed a richer relationship between Thomas and Charlotte and moved beyond the veneers represented by the oh so proper social constraints of the times.
Yes, she does set a rich period tone, but it's just the same over and over and over.
I've read my last book of this series.

RUTLAND PLACE is dark and moody with an excellent sense of period and locale, as are all the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt books. And this time Perry has given us especially interesting characters. This book involves more than one mystery, with unusual solutions. It is not always the expected thing that happens in Anne Perry's books. That's one reason I like them. Thomas and Charlotte Pitt work separately and together this time, in about equal shares. There's even some light-hearted fun. And at 217 pages it's a good, quick read.