For the prostitutes of Leather Lane, nurse Hester Monk's clinic is a lifeline, providing medicine, food, and a modicum of peace - especially since lately their ailments have escalated from bruises and fevers to broken bones and knife wounds. At the moment, however, the mysterious death of railway magnate Nolan Baltimore in a sleazy neighborhood brothel overshadows all else. Whether he fell or was pushed, the shocking question in everyone's mind is: What was such a pillar of respectability doing in a seedy place of sin?
Meanwhile, brilliant private investigator William Monk acquires a new client, a mysterious beauty who asks him to ascertain beyond a shadow of a doubt whether or not her fiance, an executive in Nolan Baltimore's thriving railway firm, has become enmeshed in fraudulent practices that could ruin him.
As Hester ventures into violent streets to learn who is responsible for the brutal abuse of her patients, Monk embarks upon a journey into the English countryside, where the last rails are being laid for a new line. But the sight of the tracks stretching into the distance revives memories once stripped from his consciousness by amnesia - as a past almost impossible to bear returns, eerily paralleling a fresh tragedy that has already begun its inexorable unfolding.
While William Monk battles amnesia to solve a case involving possible railroad fraud, his wife, Hester, finds herself working on the same case through a different channel. Hester's post as a volunteer nurse in London's Red Light District has brought her into the investigation of a railroad magnate's murder. David Colacci's understated performance relies on light characterization and brilliant transitions in dialect to portray the main characters, spiced with somewhat overstated interpretations of a few bit players. The contrast works well to maintain variety and interest, and to lend credibility to all. Colacci's subdued narrative passages can be a bit hypnotic on the long stretches, and the dialogue not always frequent enough to revive them. R.P.L. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine
About the Author
Anne Perry is the bestselling author of two acclaimed series set in Victorian England: the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novels, including Seven Dials and Long Spoon Lane, and the William Monk novels, most recently The Shifting Tide and Dark Assassin. She is also the author of the World War I novels No Graves As Yet, Shoulder the Sky, Angels in the Gloom, At Some Disputed Barricade, and We Shall Not Sleep, as well as the holiday novels A Christmas Journey, A Christmas Visitor, A Christmas Guest, A Christmas Secret, and A Christmas Beginning. Anne Perry lives in Scotland. Visit her website at www.anneperry.net.
