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Product Description
Behind the curtained windows of Victorian Boston is a world of passion, scandal ... and murder.
In life, he was the most despised man in Boston, publisher of the town's scurrilous gossip sheet -- and buyer and seller of people's most scandalous indiscretions. Now Colonel William d'Arcy Mann lies on the floor of his fashionable hotel suite, the victim of a single gunshot wound to the heart.
Addington Ames came to recover a packet of love letters written by his young cousin, Val, that had fallen into the blackmailing colonel's possession. But when he discovers Mann's corpse instead, Ames suddenly finds himself at the center of a murder inquiry, his name splashed across the town newspapers.
With Val facing public disgrace -- on the eve of marriage to an impeccable member of Brahmin society -- Ames's only hope is to find the damning missives, which he believes vanished with the killer. With the help of his sister, Caroline, and their boarder, Dr. John MacKenzie, he moves through Boston's most prominent social circles in search of a well-concealed murderer whose final act of violence will leave no life -- highborn or low -- untouched...
Amazon.com Review
Lovers of Victorian-style mystery are no doubt familiar with Anne Perry's two series of novels set in 1880s London. These set the standards of the period piece genre, wooing readers with their precisely calibrated mixture of grubby urban realism (read murder) and the tea and gossip of refined drawing rooms. With The Death of Colonel Mann, the first installment in her new Beacon Hill series, Cynthia Peale takes her own stab at that combination, but on the other side of the Atlantic.
When Colonel William D'Arcy Mann is found shot to death in his Boston hotel, few Brahmins mourn his passing. The Colonel had published far too many of Boston's highest caste's indiscretions in his gossip rag; those who had escaped such public ignominy had paid an equally high price, for Mann was not averse to a spot of genteel blackmail. The cast of suspects is large, and Peale's team of amateur sleuths is perfectly placed to ferret out the murderer. Addington Ames and his sister Caroline can trace their blue-blooded lineage back to the Ark, although their social standing teeters precariously when Addington is so gauche as to actually discover the Colonel's body. And unless Addington and Caroline can solve the crime, their beautiful young cousin Val's engagement (the ne plus ultra for a proper young Victorian woman) will be at risk---her future mama-in-law has a decided aversion to scandal. Addington and Caroline are an amiable pair, as is their boarder, Dr. John MacKenzie, who plays Watson to Addington's Sherlock when he isn't wondering how to court his hostess. Peale falls short of Perry's narrative mastery, however: where Perry effortlessly blends historical detail, evocative descriptions of the London cityscape, and plot, Peale's setting seems awkwardly contrived; her Boston cobblestones do more to trip up the narrative than to smooth its passage. Despite these flaws, Victorian Boston may yet yield fans for Peale, currently at work on the second Beacon Hill mystery. --Kelly Flynn
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