For readers everywhere, the arrival of a new novel featuring Superintendent Thomas Pitt and his wife, Charlotte, is cause for rejoicing - an occasion to bask once more in the matchless panorama of life in Victorian England, where gaslight gleams on cobblestones and silver spoons clink gently on fine china; where honour and shame keep close company; where the end is sometimes used to justify the most murderous means. 'The Whitechapel Conspiracy' is the series masterpiece, based on real events that shock us today as much as they chilled Londoners more than a century ago. It is spring 1892, Queen Victoria persists in her life of self-absorbed seclusion. The Prince of Wales outrages decent people with his mistresses and profligate ways. The grisly killings of Whitechapel prostitutes by a man dubbed Jack the Ripper remain a frightening enigma. And in a packed Old Bailey courtroom, distinguished soldier John Adinett is sentenced to hang for the inexplicable murder of his friend, Martin Fetters. Though Thomas Pitt should receive praise for providing key testimony in the Fetters investigation, Adinett's powerful friends of the secretive Inner Circle make sure he is vilified instead. Thus Pitt is suddenly relieved of his Bow Street command and reassigned to the clandestine Special Branch in the dangerous East End. There he must investigate alleged anarchist plots, working undercover and earning a living, far from his family, in Whitechapel, one of the area's worst slums. His allies are few - among them clever Charlotte and intrepid Gracie, the maid who knows the neighbourhood and can manoeuvre it without raising eyebrows. But neither of them anticipates the horrors soon to be revealed. 'The Whitechapel Conspiracy' resonates from the degraded depths of the East End to the seats of the mighty. Anne Perry weaves history into a rich and seamless tapestry of suspense. "Bow Street Superintendent Thomas Pitt and his wife, Charlotte, return in an intricately plotted and highly atmospheric novel of murder and political conspiracy that moves from elegant drawing rooms to the most desperate slums in late Victorian London. An Anne Perry novel is a delight to read as much for its Victorian-era details as for the mystery it unfolds." - Chicago Tribune

Publication Year: 2001