Sandra T. (silverwife) reviewed on 7/8/2012 + 16 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 4

This is an excellent opener to a series and has made me a pretty devoted fan. It's 1856 and William Monk has awakened in a hospital without a memory. He doesn't even know his name until someone tells him. He's surprised and puzzled to find out that he's a 'peeler', a member of the British police. As soon as he's released he starts trying to piece together his past while still working on the cases he's assigned. He meets (and winds up allying himself with) a nurse recently back from the fields of the Crimean War. Despite the antipathy between them, information from their two pretty disparate realms actually work well together and keeps the story moving along at a clipping pace. Anne Perry does an excellent job of evoking the mores, the concerns, the constraints, the flavor of the period. Her plotting and pacing are very good. If you like murder mysteries you'll like it. If you like mysteries woven in an historical setting, you'll like it a lot.

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