William Monk Mystery
24 total works
In the dead of night in a notorious area of Victorian London's East End known as St Giles a factory girl stumbles over the bloody bodies of two City gentlemen. When Detective John Evan finally arrives at the scene, he is confronted by a most difficult investigation. First he must identify the men. Then he must find out why men of means and social standing would go to such a sordid area. Most importantly, who are their assailants? And how could they escape unharmed and unnoticed?
Mercifully the younger victim is not quite dead. Having sustained terrible internal injuries, he's later released home from hospital severely traumatised and unable to speak - to be told that the other victim, his father, is dead, and Hester Latterly has been employed to help nurse him back to full recovery.
With too many obstacles impeding his progress, Evan finally enlists the aid of his old friend, William Monk, who, together with Hester's help, must unravel one of his most complex and shocking cases yet.
It's 1859 and throughout Europe tremendous upheavals have taken place. Hester Latterly is nurse to the sick son of a German Baron and his family, who have moved to London from one of the many small principalities between Prussia and Bavaria - and the Baroness tells Hester about her kingdom's famous royal family...
Handsome Prince Friedrich was one of just two heirs to the crown, considered the perfect match by every woman of the land. But during an affair with Countess Zorah Rostova, he meets the alluring and sophisticated Gisela - with whom he falls deeply in love. He can have Gisela or the crown, but not both. He chooses Gisela, marries her in Venice and, after many years, tragically dies in England.
Now, Countess Zorah, having accused the widowed Princess of murdering Friedrich, is being sued in the biggest slander trial of the century - and the only way that she can defend herself is to prove that Gisela is indeed guilty. But in doing so she must sully the greatest love story that the country has ever known, and that is enough to put her lawyer's career in jeopardy, too. That lawyer is Oliver Rathbone, who calls on Investigator William Monk to help...
No breath of scandal has ever touched the aristocratic Moidore family. London's wealthiest and most influential can often be found taking tea or dining in the opulent family mansion of Sir Basil Moidore in Queen Anne Street.
Now Sir Basil's beautiful widowed daughter has been stabbed to death in her own bed, a shocking and incomprehensible tragedy. Inspector William Monk is ordered to find her killer without delay - and in a manner that will give least pain to her family.
Handicapped by his inept supervisor and the lingering traces of amnesia, Monk gropes warily through the silence and shadows that obscure the case. But with the intelligent help of Hester Latterly, he begins to approach the astonishing solution, step by dangerous step.
Investigator William Monk, nurse Hester Latterly, and brilliant Oliver Rathbone, counsel for the defense, work feverishly to break down the wall of silence raised by the accused and her husband’s proud family. With the trial only days away, these there sleuths inch toward the dark and appalling heart of the mystery.
Death might be commonplace in 1857 in the Royal Free Hospital in London's Gray's Inn Road, but murder certainly isn't. When the body of Prudence Barrymore, a gently bred, dedicated and passionate nurse, is discovered stuffed into a laundry chute no one - high born or low - can be beyond suspicion. But the police seem determined to concentrate their efforts on proving Dr Kristian Beck the culprit - because he is foreign. Concerned and unhappy with this state of affairs, Lady Callandra Daviot of the Board of Governers asks Investigator William Monk to pursue the case.
Monk, frustrated by the lingering traces of amnesia caused by an accident, agrees, and calls upon his old colleagues to aid him. Hester Latterly, an independent young woman who served with Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War, knew the dead woman there; Hester's profession provides the perfect cover for her to obtain work at the Royal Free. And Oliver Rathbone, a brilliant barrister, who is brought in as counsel for the defence. But under the ever-present shadow of the gallows, and inching towards the appalling solution, the three begin to despair of justice ever prevailing.
One night, in a corridor of the Royal Naval Hospital, Greenwich, nurse Hester Monk is approached by a terrified girl. She's from a hidden ward of children, all subject to frequent blood-letting, and her brother is dying.
While William Monk's River Police fight to keep London safe from gun-runners, Hester takes on a new role at the hospital, helping to administer a secretive new treatment. But she slowly realises that this experimental cure is putting the lives of the children at risk. Attempting to protect the young victims, she comes under threat from one rich, powerful, and very ill man who is desperate to survive...
DARK TIDE RISING is the 24th compelling mystery in the William Monk series, from the master of Victorian crime, New York Times bestselling author Anne Perry. 'Anne Perry's Victorian mysteries are marvels of plot construction...truly remarkable' New York Times.
When Kate Exeter is kidnapped on the shore of the Thames, Commander William Monk is enlisted by her desperate husband to save her. Kate's captors are demanding a ransom for her safe return and Monk and his most trusted men must arrange a secret handover in the dark slums of Jacob's Island. But on the night someone betrays them and a brutal skirmish breaks out, leaving death and destruction in its wake . . .
Who is to blame for what went wrong? Monk senses tensions mount and no one knows who to trust. Then a whistle blower claims that the ransom money was embezzled funds that incriminate Kate's husband, and the case takes on a whole new meaning...
If protecting the innocent means breaking the law, what is the right choice to make?
Inspector William Monk searches for the elusive truth in a controversial and dangerous case in Blind Justice, the nineteenth novel in Anne Perry's acclaimed series. Perfect for fans of C. J. Sansom and Arthur Conan Doyle.
'A staggering achievement... Perry's command of plot and prose shines' - Bookreporter
Oliver Rathbone, William Monk's close friend, has presided brilliantly over his first cases as a judge. But the next will bring a far greater challenge. Abel Taft, a charismatic minister adored by his congregation, stands accused of terrible corruption and fraud which has ruined the lives of those he's betrayed.
In court, each victim affirms Taft's guilt, but when the defence's star witness tears their stories apart, the case seems lost. Rathbone realises he holds, locked away, a piece of evidence that could change the outcome of the trial and bring true justice, but can he, as the judge, become involved? The decision Rathbone makes will draw Monk deep into a dangerous case that will shape the rest of both their lives...
Winner of the Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for Best Historical Novel 2014.
What readers are saying about Blind Justice:
'I have found Anne Perry to be one of the best writers I have read. Her books are very atmospheric and I feel that I am actually in Victorian London'
'A riveting mystery wrapped up in the dark and seedy side of Victorian London'
'Anne Perry is the best Victorian crime [writer] I have ever read'
He is not going to die, after all, in this Victorian pesthouse called a hospital. But the accident that felled him on a London street has left him with only half a life, because his memory and his entire past have vanished. His name, they tell him, is William Monk, and he is a London police detective; the mirror reflects a face that women woud like, but he senses he has been more feared than loved.
Monk is given a particularly sensational case: the brutal murder of Major the Honourable Joscelin Grey, Crimean war hero and a popular man about town, in his rooms in fashionable Mecklenburgh Square. It's an assignment to make or break an investigator, for the exalted status of the victim puts any representative of the police in the precarious position of having to pry into a noble family's secrets.
Suggesting that his superior, the wily Runcorn, hopes he will fail, Monk returns to a world where he cannot distinguish friend from foe. Grasping desperately for any clue to his own past and to the identity of the killer, each new revelation leads Monk step by terrifying step to the answers he seeks but dreads to find.
The master of the Victorian crime, New York Times bestselling author Anne Perry returns with the 23rd novel in the William Monk series, AN ECHO OF MURDER.
London, 1870: The body of a Hungarian immigrant is found dead in what appears to be a ritualistic killing, with a bayonet through his heart, his fingers broken and his body surrounded by seventeen blood-dipped candles. At first, Commander William Monk of the Thames River Police suspects the killer is from within the community, but when another murder takes place, Monk fears the immigrants are being targeted by an outsider...
Meanwhile, Hester is reunited with a doctor who had been left for dead on a Crimean battlefield. Traumatised by his experiences, Fitz has made his way home via Hungary and is now living in the community. Hester is determined to help him and, when he is accused of the killings, she sets out to prove his innocence...
London, 1856. It is a time of progress, with the Empire's interests expanding and the Suez Canal nearing completion. Many people stand to gain - and to lose - as the world rapidly changes.
When a Thames pleasure boat is blown up with the loss of many lives, an Egyptian man is quickly sentenced to hang for the crime. But William Monk, head of the River Police, discovers the evidence was flawed. As he and his wife Hester investigate further, Monk begins to wonder if the wrong man was convicted. If justice itself has been tainted, exposing the true culprit will be far more hazardous...