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Bedford Square: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel
by Anne Perry
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Ballantine Books (2000-04-04)
ISBN: 0449005828
EAN: 9780449005828
Dewy Decimal #: 823.914
Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages
Release Date: 2000-04-04
SKU: 18223
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comments: Good condition from non smoking and pet free home.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
The freshly dead body sprawled on the Bedford Square doorstep of General Brandon Balantyne is an affront to every respectable sensibility. The general denies all knowledge of the shabbily dressed victim who has so rudely come to death outside his home. But Superintendent Thomas Pitt cannot believe him. For in the dead man's pocket he finds a rare snuffbox that recently graced the general's study. He must tread lightly, however, lest his investigation trigger a tragedy of immense proportions, ensnaring honorable men like flies in a web. Pitt's clever wife, Charlotte, becomes his full partner in probing this masterpiece of evil, spawned by an amorality greater than they can imagine . . .
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Amazon.com Review
Even if you prefer the tougher, edgier William Monk books by Anne Perry, such as A Breach of Promise, there's no denying the wealth of detail and the powerful emotions at work in her longer series of Victorian murder mysteries featuring Thomas and Charlotte Pitt. The Pitt books effectively merge Henry James with Raymond Chandler: by having a middleclass policeman married to a socialite, Perry can probe both worlds, as she does in Bedford Square, a story of high-level blackmail and murder. A famous historical scandal called the Tranby Croft affair (a gambling case involving the Prince of Wales) is very much in the news when the body of a working-class man is found early one morning on the posh doorstep of General Brandon Balantyne. No one in the house claims to know the murdered man, but he has a valuable piece of jewelry belonging to the Balantynes in his pocket. Thomas Pitt and his outspoken aide, Sergeant Tellman, must tread lightly, but Charlotte--and especially her sharp relative Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould--aren't restrained by such social niceties. Gracie, the Pitts' smart and rough-tongued maid, is also a valued asset to the investigation, which proceeds in a satisfying, if not particularly surprising, manner to a highly dramatic conclusion. Other recent books in the Pitt series include Brunswick Gardens, Ashworth Hall, and Pentecost Alley. --Dick Adler
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Customer Reviews
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Bedford Square by Anne Perry
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-10-11
As with all of Anne Perry's Thomas and Charlotte Pitt novels,I am delighted with Bedford Square. I love reading mysteries and especially about either Victorian (or Regency) England. Her books are clean with no vulgar language and I appreciate this. They are some of the best mysteries I have read and I have read quite a few.
Judy Moughon
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Pretty disappointing
Rating  (3)
Date: 2008-04-08
The sociomoral theme for today, boys and girls, is reputation: How to build a good public one and how to maintain it in the face of blackmail, given people's tendency to believe anything bad they read in the newspapers about public figures. It begins with a body being discovered on the doorstep of General Balantyne, whose family figured in two earlier books in the series. Exactly why it's there is never satisfactorily explained, but Superintendent Pitt gradually uncovers a web of blackmail threats which the victims would find it almost impossible to disprove, set as they are in the professional pasts of a number of gentlemen. It's never quite clear, either, why the gentlemen in question would reveal these particular incidents to anyone else, and in such detail, in casual conversations at the club. The reader is unlikely to figure out whodunit (or why) until the last chapter, but that's largely because the author seems to have picked a bad guy more or less at random and then made assertions about how things happened with little regard for plausibility. This is the 19th book in the Victorian London mystery series and Perry has been getting more and more sloppy in making the story believable, seeming more interested in exploring ethical and moral questions than in writing a good murder mystery.
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Weak Plot
Rating  (2)
Date: 2006-02-14
0 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
I was dissapointed with this novel. It seemed to me that the book kept dragging itself. While there were interesting turns at some places, the conclusion was not dramatic. It did not make sense why one of those characters would have done the crime -- it was almost like the novel had to be ended and a culprit had to be picked by the toss of a coin.
While the details into Victorian society are good -- the author repeats the same sentences too many times in the book. It could definitely have been a shorter book with a poor end.
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Blackmail?
Rating (3)
Date: 2002-02-19
The book failed for me because I found it implausible that blackmail could succeed without the the blackmailer actually having anything dishonorable, illegal, or even embarrassing, to expose about the persons being blackmailed. Should it even be called blackmail if there is no substance or truth to what is threatened to be revealed, and both parties to the so-called blackmail know that?
Having said that, I still think any Anne Perry is worth the read. You always get clear prose, a time-travel feel of things, and likable main characters, as well as in most cases, a creative and interesting story.
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Bedford Square
Rating (3)
Date: 2002-02-07
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book has the good qualities of the rest of the series -- strong setting, interesting characters and an original plot. In this one, however, the plot doesn't quite hang together in several respects. Why would anybody believe in a suicide note written not in handwriting but pasted from newspaper, like the blackmail letters prominent citizens have been getting? And why was it necessary for the dead man found on a doorstep with a snuffbox in his pocket to look like another man? The conclusion comes rather suddenly and considerably out of left field -- the author hasn't done a good job of foreshadowing the end.As already suggested, this volume is about blackmail, with both old and new characters receiving notes threatening to spread irrefutable falsehoods about their pasts. This was an interesting theme, which could have been more deeply explored. Yet again, unrequited love plays a part here. For some reason, people in these books are perpetually falling for people they can't have. I'm not sure it's realistic for it to happen so often, but in the context of one book it's perfectly fine. Sergeant Tellman, with the chip on his shoulder, gets more development here and becomes a really appealing character. Despite my quibbles with the plot, I found the book essentially enjoyable.
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