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DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 3, No. 17 |
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talks about her new book SOUTHAMPTON ROW 22nd in the series about Thomas & Charlotte Pitt  |
This time Pitt must solve
the murder of a spiritualist
By RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
Life keeps growing more complicated for Scotland Yard's Inspector Thomas Pitt as the reign of Queen Victoria rolls on in "Southampton Row" (Ballantine, $25), latest in the series of historical mystery novels by Anne Perry. For one thing, he's no longer working as a police detective--the result of political intrigue that keeps getting more exasperating as the years go by.
Now assigned to the fledgling department called "Special Branch" because he has crossed swords with the sinister, secret "Inner Circle" of political power-brokers, Pitt has a new supervisor and uncomfortable new duties that has him working in the gray areas of political intrigue and "dirty tricks."
His arch enemy, Charles Voisey, a leader of the Inner Circle, is now running as a candidate for Parliament, trying to seize the seat of Liberal party MP Aubrey Serracold. Should Voisey upset Serracold, it could tip the balance of power and move him into line for tremendously influential jobs in a Tory government. Once in Parliament, Voisey might be the instrument to hand control of England over to the Inner Circle--with dire consequences.
Pitt's job is to find ways to stop Voisey from using a potentially scandalous secret against his Liberal opponent: Serracold's bright, but radical wife is secretly seeing a "spirit-reader." If that should get out, the public might force Serracold to either denounce his own wife for her kooky notions--or, worse yet, defend her and suffer the consequences.
Grumbling, Pitt takes on the job he feels is totally out of his realm of expertise, losing heart rapidly because he senses Voisey may have a chance of beating Serracold after all. Then a startling development puts Pitt on much more solid ground: Somebody murders the spiritualist in a most grotesque and violent manner just hours after she conducted a seance attended by Mrs. Serracold, a well-known military man and a mysterious "third man" whose identity remains a secret.
With time running out as the election draws near, Pitt returns to detective work in a desperate race to learn what went on at that seance, who the unknown man was and who returned later to murder the spiritualist.
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in the series about Thomas and Charlotte Pitt. |
Perry's skill at holding the cloak of mystery over her plot till the very last moment is well known. What makes the Pitt mysteries so special, though, is her ability to invest them with her very savvy understanding of how England functioned in the days of Queen Victoria, where much that went on actually happened behind closed doors, often in sharp contrast to the ethics and mores of the period.
In "Southampton Row," for instance, she makes the Inner Circle seem so credibly powerful that you don't bother to question it when Pitt decides to send wife Charlotte and their children off to a secret country retreat for fear the Inner Circle may get at him by harming them.
At a March reading and book-signing appearance in my new home grounds--Bellingham, Washington--Perry smiled benignly when someone asked her if there really was an "Inner Circle" in Victorian England. "Not that I know of," she said, but I'm sure she was smiling because she's pleased she has created such a convincingly possible secret organization that people sincerely wonder if they just somehow missed that in English History 1A.
One thought had occurred to me, though, after finishing "Southampton Row," which is set toward the end of Victoria's reign: How far into the future does she plan to carry Thomas and Charlotte Pitt? When I asked her about it, I prefaced my question by reminding her that many modern-day literary critics believe Conan Doyle's decision to keep his Sherlock Holmes in the era of gas lights was the smartest thing he ever did.
"There is no master plan," Perry said. "I've completed the next book, but I only have a general idea of what comes next for them. I'm not rushing them into the 20th century. Remember, there's only about 1 1/2 days between books."
That got a pretty good laugh from the crowd, but it wasn't that big a stretch of the truth. Perry knows she has something special going with her two series of mysteries--the Pitt series and the one featuring private investigator William Monk--because both operate in Victorian England. Others have written mystery series in the Sherlock Holmes era with success--Peter Lovesey's Sergeant Cribb series comes to mind--but none have rivalled the enormous popularity of Perry's two series. Given the comfortable spot she's made for herself in the mystery world, Perry isn't about to age her characters so rapidly that they'll have to cope with Nazi spies in their senior years--as poor Sherlock and Watson had to do when Hollywood got hold of them.
Perry plots each novel out thoroughly in advance, starting with the solution of the mystery and working backward to its beginnings. When one reader asked her if knowing who did it in advance didn't spoil the fun for her, she grinned and explained, "It would bother me a lot more if I didn't."
One thing always has impressed me about the best creative artists in the mystery field: They seem genuinely happy to credit mystery writers of the past whose work influenced them. Doyle, for instance, always admitted the influence of Edgar Allen Poe's Auguste Dupin on Sherlock Holmes. Robert B. Parker, creator of Spenser, the Boston private eye, sees his detective as descendant from Hammett's Sam Spade and Chandler's Philip Marlowe. The creators of TV's Jessica Fletcher of "Murder, She Wrote" weren't shy about admitting she was an American version of Christie's Miss Marple. And so on.
When
I asked Perry to list her influences, she cited Dorothy L. Sayers
and G.K. Chesterton, although she was quick to point out she
was more influenced by Chesteron's other stories than she was
by his more famous Father Brown mysteries. She also, most naturally,
listed Conan Doyle, but made it clear she wasn't a great fan
of the man himself--a well-known mysoginist who also turned to
spiritualism in his later years.
(For a time in "Southampton Row," I thought sure the
"mystery man" at the seance might turn out to be Conan
Doyle, but Perry reminded me she seldom works real people into
her plots, not counting the royal family or government figures
like Gladstone, whose presence is needed to keep the credibility
of the period.)
When it comes to her admitted influences, I don't see many of them in the Inspector Pitt character. He's certainly nothing like Sayers' Peter Wimsey. Personally, I think he's a stable, level-headed and soft-spoken man who most resembles P.D. James' Adam Dalgliesh, a man I think might be quite comfortable back in Victorian England.
Perry now lives in a quiet village in Scotland. She admits to being quite "comfortable" financially these days, but she also remembers quite vividly that she wrote for 10 years without being able to sell a single thing. She is very well-regarded by critics and stands maybe just a step below P.D. James, Ruth Rendell and Minette Walters in the current hierarchy of female British mystery writers, most likely because she writes period mysteries and critics prefer contemporary mysteries.
My first personal meeting with Perry came in 1998 when the A&E cable network filmed her first Pitt mystery, "The Cater Street Hangman" as the first step in filming the whole canon in sequence. I was then working with the network on a book about their mystery programs, which eventually fell apart during negotiations between the publisher and the network. But it cleared the way for me to spend a very enjoyable hour alone with Perry in a luxury suite at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Pasadena, doing an interview that never saw print.
Perry is a tall, handsome woman of 63. She has a very warm personality and a good sense of humor. You can't be around her very long without also realizing what a sharp intellect she has. Her output as a writer reflects that: She averages two novels a year and in just a bit more than 20 years has built up a most impressive list of mysteries, after getting a rather late start on her literary career.
Wherever she goes, her fans keep asking her when there will be more Pitt novels brought to the screen. Despite A&E's decision to not go forward with the series, "The Cater Street Hangman" was an excellent film--produced in elegant period style by that fine producer June Wyndham Davies, who also did PBS' "Sherlock Holmes" series with Jeremy Brett. Perry also liked the film very much and was quite let down when more weren't forthcoming.
"We now have hope someone else will pick up the series and do them," she said. "They have the rights to the first five books. I'd love to have PBS do them."
So would I, but I'm not real hopeful there, not with PBS putting all its emphasis on doing American-based stories for the "Mystery!" series, which now has been moved to the summer months. Still, "Sherlock Holmes" was a mighty attraction for "Mystery!", so maybe there's a glimmer of hope out there.
Meanwhile, by all means read "Southampton Row." It's a devilishly clever mystery with a great conclusion--even if it does leave plenty of room for more mischief between Voisey and Pitt when the dust finally settles.
© 2002 by Ron Miller. The Ron Miller caricature is © 2001 by Jim Hummel. The photo of Anne Perry is by Robert Clark and is from the dust cover of "Southampton Row." The book cover is from the Ballantine hardcover edition.
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Ron Miller is the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series, and currently writes the "Case Book" column for the offical "Mystery!" website. He also teaches a course in "The Curious History of Mystery" at Whatcom Community College in Bellingham, WA.
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