The Cater Street Hangman

When a servant girl is murdered in Cater Street, Charlotte Ellison and her sister do what respectable young Victorian women absolutely should not: they involve themselves in the police investigation. The detective assigned to the case is Thomas Pitt, young, perceptive, and working-class in a social world that views him with polite condescension. Anne Perry's first Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novel establishes the partnership that would sustain one of crime fiction's most enduring series, built around the tension between what Victorian society permits women to know and what women know anyway.

Davina Porter's narration is as associated with Perry's Victorian mysteries as it is with the Rendell and McCall Smith series, her voice carrying the period's social codes with the irony they deserve. Her Charlotte is direct and alive, the character's unconventionality readable in every line Porter delivers. At exactly ten hours, The Cater Street Hangman sets up the series with economy and confidence, introducing two characters whose long collaboration would become one of crime fiction's most satisfying partnerships.