An Echo of Murder

An Echo of Murder brings Monk a series of ritualistic killings of Hungarian immigrants in Victorian London, each crime scene arranged with sixteen candles around a dismembered body. The investigation pushes against both community suspicion and the limitations of Monk's resources as he tries to determine whether the murders follow a cultural logic or the logic of a single disturbed mind, possibly one whose wartime trauma has erased his own participation.

David Colacci's narration gives the novel its appropriately somber tone, his voice suited to the Victorian waterfront atmosphere and the gravity of crimes that target the most vulnerable members of a foreign community. Perry's habit of using historical detail as moral context rather than decoration is well-served by Colacci's careful attention to the social texture that surrounds the investigation.