William Monk Books In Order

The Face of a Stranger

‘Richly textured with the sights and sounds of London and its countryside…
Solidly absorbing and Perry’s best to date.’
THE KIRKUS REVIEWS
His name, they tell him, is William Monk, and he is a London police detecive. But the accident that felled him has left him with only half a life; his memory and his entire past have vanished. As he tries to hide the truth, Monk returns to work and is assigned to investigate the brutal murder of a Crimean War hero and man about town. Which makes Monk’s efforts doubly difficult, since he’s forgotten his professional skills along with everything else…
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A Dual Main Selection of the Mystery Guild

From the Paperback edition.

A Dangerous Mourning

This book is recorded on 11 cassettes for 15 hours of listening pleasure. This is a library edition In this enthralling Victorian mystery, master storyteller Anne Perry sweeps you back to the gaslit cobbled streets of nineteenth century England and to the shocking secrets that lay hidden behind closed doors. No breath of scandal has ever stirred in the aristocratic halls of the Moidore family. That is, until the upstairs maid discovers Sir Basil’s beautiful widowed daughter stabbed to death. The London Police Department immediately dispatches its most brilliant detective, WIlliam Monk, to track down her killer. After searching the scene of the crime, Monk arrives at a chilling conclusion, the killer can only be someone who lives in the house. With the intelligent help of Hester Latterly, a brave young nurse who served with Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War, Monk sifts through the shameful secrets of a proud family and its servants to expose a violent murderer preparing to strike again. Filled with breathtaking psychological suspense, coloful historical atmosphere, A Dangerous Mourning is Anne Perry at her extraordinary best.

Defend and Betray

‘A richly textured and timeless novel of suspense. Her Victorian England pulsates with life and is peopled with wonderfully memorable characters.’

Faye Kellerman

Although esteemed General Thaddeus Carlyon meets his death in a freak accident at home, his beautiful wife, Alexandra, confesses that she killed him. Investigator William Monk, nurse Hester Latterly, and the 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, they inch toward the dark and appalling heart of the mystery. The final act is a courtroom masterpiece, through which we dare not breathe too deeply, lest the precarious balance of a woman’s life be lost.

A Sudden, Fearful Death

In a London hospital, Prudence Barrymore, a talented nurse who had once been one of Florence Nightingale’s angels of mercy in the Crimean War, meets sudden death by strangulation. Private inquiry agent William Monk is engaged to investigate this horrific crime which intuition tells him was no random stroke of violence by a madman. Greatly helped by his unconventional friend Hester Latterly, another of Miss Nightingale s nurses, and barrister Oliver Rathbone, Monk assembles a portrait of the remarkable woman. Yet he also discerns the shadow of a tragic evil that darkens every level of society, and a frightening glimmer of his own eclipsed past.

Sins of the Wolf

‘Perry has two strengths: memorable characters and an ability to evoke the Victorian era with the finely wrought detail of a miniaturist.’ The Wall Street JournalNurse Hester Latterly finds herself well suited for the position: accompany Mrs. Mary Farraline, an elderly Scottish lady with delicate health, on a short train trip to London. Yet Hester’s simple job takes a grave turn when the woman dies during the night. And when a postmortem examination of the body reveals a lethal dose of medicine, Hester is charged with murder punishable by execution. The notorious case presents detective William Monk with a daunting task: find a calculating killer amongst the prominent and coolly unassailable Farraline clan. Since Hester must be tried in Edinburgh, where prejudice against her runs high, there is little that the highly skilled barrister Oliver Rathbone can do to help. He can only try to direct her Scottish lawyer from the frustrating sidelines, and pray that Hester will not be sent to the gallows…
.’When it comes to the Victorian mystery, Anne Perry has proved that nobody does it better.’ The San Diego Union TribuneA MAIN SELECTION OF THE MYSTERY GUILDAN ALTERNATE SELECTION OF THE LITERARY GUILD

Cain His Brother

‘Give her a good murder and a shameful social evil, and Anne Perry can write a Victorian mystery that would make Dickens’s eyes pop.’ The New York Times Book ReviewVictoria’s London was the queen of the universe, a dazzling metropolis from whose magnificent mansions and discreetly luxurious clubs flowed the strategies that built the greatest empire ever known. Meanwhile the city’s poor suffered and died in hopeless obscurity. Inspector William Monk knows his city’s best and its worst or so he believes until the day when charming Genevieve Stonefield comes to plead with him to find her missing husband. In his family life, Angus Stonefield had been gentle and loving; in business, a man of probity; and in his relationship with his twin brother, Caleb, a virtual saint. Now he is missing, and it appears more than possible that Caleb a creature long since abandoned to depravity has murdered him. And so Monk puts himself into the missing man’s shoes, searching in Stonefield’s comfortable home, his prospering business, his favorite haunts, and, finally, the city’s dangerous, fever ridden slums for clues to Angus’s fate and his vicious brother’s whereabouts. Slowly, Monk inches toward the truth and also, unwittingly, toward the destruction of his good name and livelihood…
. Cain His Brother builds from one astonishment to another until, in a transfixed courtroom, fate, or perhaps the devil, plays with men’s lives and laughs a last mad laugh. Never before has Anne Perry penetrated so deeply into the darkness of the human heart and into a past that rises up to haunt us with its tragic ironies.A MAIN SELECTION OF THE MYSTERY GUILDAN ALTERNATE SELECTION OF THE LITERARY GUILD AND DOUBLEDAY BOOK CLUBS

Weighed in the Balance

Few mystery writers this side of Arthur Conan Doyle can evoke Victorian London with such relish for detail and mood, proclaimed the San Francisco Chronicle of Anne Perry. With a stroke of her pen, Perry restores the lost splendor of Victorian England to such three dimensional brilliance that it becomes as real as the world we live in. Now, in Weighed in the Balance, she takes us into the exotic lives of royal exiles in London, Venice, and a picture book German principality. When Countess Zorah Rostova sweeps into the office of London barrister Sir Oliver Rathbone and asks him to defend her against a serious charge of slander, he is astonished to find himself accepting. For, from what he learns of the case, a defense of the countess can only earn him notoriety. Twenty years earlier, Countess Zorah’scountryman, Prince Friedrich, had abdicated his throne to marry a woman who was unacceptable as queen. Since then the prince and his beloved Princess Gisela have lived in romantic exile as the world’s most famous lovers. Now the prince is dead and Countess Zorah claims that Princess Gisela has murdered him. Unfortunately she can produce not a shred of evidence to support her shocking assertion. Nor can that formidable private investigator, William Monk. However, Monk and his friend nurse Hester Latterly do establish that the prince was murdered. And as events unfold, the likeliest suspect seems to be Countess Zorah herself. In this suspenseful and darkly rich novel, Anne Perry draws us into a drama that reaches its mesmerizing climax in the Old Bailey, where two remarkable women one boldly confident, the other wrapped in grief await the chill exposure of naked truth, the inexorable unfolding of their destinies.

The Silent Cry

No author since Dickens has captured the shadow side of Victoria’s England as masterfully as Anne Perry. In The Silent Cry, she once again exposes the particular vices spawned by an age renowned for its virtues and reforms. And our able guide is investigator William Monk, ‘the dark and brooding hero who infuses this luxuriantly detailed series with its romantic soul’ The New York Times Book Review. Deep in London’s filthy, dangerous slums, Victorians transacted their most secret and shameful business. For a price, a man could procure whatever he wanted, but it happened now and then that the price he paid was his life. Now, in sunless Water Lane, respected solicitor Leighton Duff lies dead, kicked and beaten to death. Beside him lies the barely living body of his son, Rhys. The police cannot fathom these brutal assaults, until shrewd investigator William Monk uncovers a connection between them and a series of rapes and beatings of local prostitutes. Then it begins to seem shockingly clear that young Rhys Duff must have killed his own father. In a heartstopping courtroom drama, the Crown’s case against Rhys Duff, accused of patricide, begins its inexorable unfolding. With it Anne Perry adds another haunting chapter to her magnificent recreation of a bygone era.

A Breach of Promise/The Whited Sepulchres

2 cassettes / 3 hoursRead by Simon JonesWhen Anne Perry sets her magic pen to paper, Victorian England awakens from her long sleep to vibrant, teeming life. Firelight flickers in luxurious withdrawing rooms. Ambitious ladies gossip and scheme. Horse drawn carriages clatter over cobblestones while cries of flower sellers and newsboys ring out in crowded streets. In this magnificent new novel featuring investigator William Monk, however, it is the breathless hush of a London courtroom that first holds readers enthralled. The plaintiffs in a sensational breach of promise suit are wealthy social climbers Barton and Delphine Lambert, suing on behalf of their beautiful daughter, Zillah. The defendant is Zillah’s alleged fianc , brilliant young architect Killian Melville, who adamantly declares that he will not, cannot, marry her. Not even to his baffled counsel, distinguished barrister Sir Oliver Rathbone, will Killian explain his rejection of rich and charming Zillah. Utterly baffled, Rathbone turns for help to his old comrades in crime Monk, the private investigator who knows his city like the back of his hand, and fearless nurse Hester Latterly. But even as they scout London for clues, from Mayfair to sordid Devil’s Acre, the case suddenly and tragically ends. An outcome that no one except a ruthless murderer could have foreseen. Stripping away the pretty masks that conceal society’s darkest transgressions, Anne Perry unflinchingly exposes the human heart’s deepest hiding places and creates the most mesmerizing courtroom drama of her distinguished career.

The Twisted Root

In a stunning feat of the imagination, Anne Perry encloses readers within the magic circle of her genius and brings to life the lost world of England’s Victorian Age. Hoofbeats clatter on cobblestones, gaslight glimmers through fog, and in the exclusive privacy of elegant drawing rooms, powerful men and women once again live the splendor and shame of that matchless era. With The Twisted Root, Perry holds us rapt with a chilling story of love, betrayal, and consummate evil. As private investigator William Monk listens to young Lucius Stourbridge plead for help in tracking down his runaway fianc e, he feels a sense of heavy foreboding. Miriam Gardiner disappeared suddenly from a croquet party at the luxurious Bayswater mansion of her in laws to be, and has not been seen since. But on Hampstead Heath, Monk finds the coach in which Miriam had fled and, nearby, the murdered body of the coachman. There is no trace of Miriam. What strange compulsion could have driven the beautiful widow to abandon the prospect of a loving marriage and financial abundance? Monk’s attempt to answer that question proves a challenge, as Miriam Gardiner’s fateful flight ends in a packed London courtroom where brilliant barrister Oliver Rathbone wages an uphill battle to absolve her from a charge of murder. And in a race with the hangman, Monk and clever nurse Hester Latterly themselves now newlyweds desperately pursue the elusive truth…
and an unknown killer whose malign brilliance they have scarcely begun to fathom.

Slaves of Obsession

The year is 1861. The American Civil War has just begun, and London arms dealer Daniel Albertson is becoming a very wealthy man as emissaries from both sides of the conflict rush to purchase his wares. The quiet dinner party held by Albertson and his beautiful wife seems remote indeed from the passions rending America. Yet investigator William Monk and his bride, Hester, sense growing tensions and barely concealed violence in this well appointed mansion. For two of the guests are Americans, each vying to buy Albertson’s armaments. Philo Trace, the Southerner, is both charming and intelligent, but a defender of slavery. Northerner Lyman Breelove is a disturbing blend of political zealot and personal reserve to whom Albertson’s teenage daughter has pledged her heart. Soon Monk and Hester’s forebodings are fulfilled. For within this group, one is brutally murdered in a cruel ritualistic fashion, and two others disappear along with Albertson’s entire inventory of weapons. Slaves of Obsession twists and turns like a powder keg fuse as Monk and Hester track the man they believe to be a cold blooded murderer all the way to Washington D.C. and the bloody battlefield at Manassas. Yet finally, in a hushed London courtroom scene, Anne Perry holds her readers breathless and spellbound while Sir Oliver Rathbone fights to defend the innocent…
and perhaps the guilty…
from the hangman’s noose.

Funeral in Blue

When her brother arrives on her doorstep, Hester Monk is shocked as much by the unexpectedness of the visit as by the reason for it. For since her marriage to Monk, Charles and his elegant wife, Imogen, have kept their distance. But now Charles needs Hester’s help. He believes Imogen is having an affair there can be no other explanation for her recent strange behaviour. However, before Hester is able to investigate, a tragedy occurs. In a nearby artist’s studio two women have been brutally killed. Having left the police force with extreme ill feeling between himself and his superior, the last thing Monk wants to do is face the demons of his past. But, in the course of his work, Monk is left with no choice but to visit his old adversary, Runcorn, and involve himself with the sensational murder case.

Death of a Stranger

Few authors have written more mesmerizingly about Victorian London than Anne Perry. Readers enter her world with exquisite anticipation, and experience a rich variety of characters and class: aristocrats living in luxury, flower sellers on street corners, ladies of the evening seeking customers on gaslit streets, gentlemen in hansom cabs en route to erotic diversions unknown in their Mayfair mansions. Now Perry gives her myriad fans the book they ve been waiting for the novel in which William Monk breaks through the wall of amnesia and discovers at last who he once was. Death of a StrangerFor the prostitutes of Leather Lane, nurse Hester Monk’s clinic is a lifeline, providing medicine, food, and a modicum of peace especially welcome 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 fianc , 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 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. From the Hardcover edition.

The Shifting Tide

In her new masterpiece featuring private inquiry agent William Monk, New York Times bestselling novelist Anne Perry displays her prodigious writing talent. With insight, compassion, and a portraitist’s genius, Perry illuminates The Shifting Tide of emotions encompassing Queen Victoria s London and the people who live there aristocrats, brothel owners, thieves, Dickensian ruffians, and their evil keepers. She takes us through dangerous backstreets where the poor eke out their humble livings, and into the mansions of the rich, safe and secure in their privileged lives. Or so they believe…
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William Monk knows London s streets like the back of his hand; after all, they are where he earns his living. But the river Thames and its teeming docks where towering schooners and clipper ships unload their fabulous cargoes and wharf rats and night plunderers ply their trades is unknown territory.

Only dire need persuades him to accept an assignment from shipping magnate Clement Louvain to investigate the theft of a cargo of African ivory from Louvain s recently docked schooner, the Maude Idris. Monk is desperate for work, not only to feed himself and his wife, Hester, but to keep open the doors of Hester s clinic, a last resort for sick and starving street women.

But he wonders: Why didn t Louvain report the ivory theft directly to the River Police? Why did he warn Monk not to investigate the murder of one of the Maude Idris crew? Even more mysterious, why has Louvain brought to Hester s clinic a desperately ill woman who he claims is the discarded mistress of an old friend? Neither Hester nor Monk anticipates the nightmare answers to these questions…
nor the trap that soon so fatefully ensnares them.

In this magnificent novel, Anne Perry holds the reader spellbound, as Monk and Hester struggle to save themselves and their world from a catastrophe whose dimensions they can scarcely measure.

From the Hardcover edition.

Dark Assassin

For countless readers, one of life’s great pleasures is the mesmerizing magic of a Victorian mystery by New York Times bestselling author Anne Perry. Her dramas of good and evil unfolding inside London s lavish mansions and teeming slums hold us spellbound. Now, in Dark Assassin, she sweeps us into a darkly compelling world that we never dreamed existed.A Thames River Police superintendent struggling to win the respect of his men, William Monk is on a patrol boat near Waterloo Bridge when he notices a young couple standing at the bridge railing, apparently engaged in an intense discussion. The woman waves her arms and places her hands on the man s shoulders. A caress or a push? The man grasps hold of her. To save her or to kill her? Seconds later, the pair plunge to their death in the icy waters. Monk can t help but wonder, was it an accident, a suicide, or a murder? It seems impossible to determine the truth, but haunted by the woman s somber beauty, he is impelled to try. Mary Havilland was her name, and she had planned to marry Toby Argyll, the fair haired man who shared her fate. Mary s father, an engineer employed by the Argyll Company, had recently died a suicide, according to the police and Mary s sister. But Mary s friends tell Monk that she suspected her father had been murdered because of his stubborn insistence that the Argyll Company s current project the construction of a splendid new sewer system for the metropolis was so badly flawed that it put the entire city in peril from flood and fire. Monk is now faced with the mysteries of the three deaths. Aided by his intrepid wife Hester, he starts looking for answers and is soon treading a slippery path that takes him from the luxurious drawing rooms where powerful men hatch their unscrupulous plots to a world beneath the city where poor folk fight starvation. In nightmarish tunnels, Monk and Hester find true friends, among them Scuff, a young mudlark; Sutton the ratcatcher; and Snoot, Sutton s clever terrier. For once, even Monk s old enemy, Superintendent Runcorn, is on his side. As rainfall strains the fragile manmade underground, Monk must connect the clues before death strikes again. With characters as vivid as Dickens s, gripping courtroom scenes, breathless horrors beneath the earth, and a plot that twists and turns toward a stunning denouement, Dark Assassin is absolutely one of Anne Perry s best. From the Hardcover edition.

Execution Dock

Listeners of Anne Perry’s bestselling William Monk novels feel as if they ve experienced the many shades of Victorian London, from Belgravia to Limehouse, from drawing room to brothel. In Execution Dock, Perry s first Monk novel in three years, we find ourselves on the bustling docks along the River Thames. Here the empire s great merchant ships unload the treasures of the world. And here, in dank and sinister alleys, sex merchants ply their lucrative trade. The dreaded kingpin of this dark realm is Jericho Phillips. On his floating brothel, sex slaves are forced to endure unspeakable acts. Now one such soul, thirteen year old Fig, is found with his throat cut, his tortured body tossed into the river. Commander William Monk of the River Police swears that Phillips will hang for this abomination. But the miscreant is as wily as he is monstrous, and his wealthy clients seem far beyond the reach of the law. Monk s attempt to bring about justice becomes the first electrifying episode in a nightmare that will test his courage and integrity. However, reinforcements are on the way. Monk s wife, Hester, who runs a free clinic for abused women, draws a highly unusual guerrilla force to her husband s cause a canny ratcatcher, a retired brothel keeper, a fearless street urchin, and a rebellious society lady. To one as criminally minded as Phillips, these folks are mere mosquitoes, to be sure. But as he will soon discover, some mosquitoes can have a deadly sting. This gripping, terrifying story hurtles toward a denouement that will leave the reader breathless but cheering. Execution Dock is Anne Perry at her incomparable, magnificent best.

Acceptable Loss

When the body of a small time crook named Mickey Parfitt washes up on the tide, no one grieves; far from it. But William Monk, commander of the River Police, is puzzled by the expensive silk cravat used to strangle Parfitt. How did this elegant scarf whose original owner was obviously a man of substance end up imbedded in the neck of a wharf rat who richly deserved his sordid end? Dockside informers lead Monk to what may be a partial answer a floating palace of corruption on the Thames managed by Parfitt, where a captive band of half starved boys is forced to perform vile acts for men willing to pay a high price for midnight pleasures. Although Monk and his fearless wife, Hester, would prefer to pin a medal on Parfitt’s killer, duty leads them in another direction to an unresolved crime from the past, to blackmail and more murder, and to a deadly confrontation with some of the empire s most respected men. To a superlative degree, Acceptable Loss provides colorful characters, a memorable portrait of waterfront life, and a story that achieves its most thrilling moments in a transfixed London courtroom, where Monk faces his old friend Oliver Rathbone in a trial of nearly unbearable tension in sum, every delectable drop of the rich pleasure that readers expect from an Anne Perry novel.