Corridors of the Night

In the corridors of a Royal Naval Hospital in Greenwich, nurse Hester Monk is approached by a terrified girl from a hidden ward where children are subjected to frequent blood-letting at the direction of a powerful, wealthy patient desperate to survive his illness. As Hester investigates the experimental treatment and its child subjects, her husband William Monk works a case involving gunrunners on the Thames. The twenty-first William Monk novel by Anne Perry weaves its two plots together around questions of medical ethics, the limits of compassion, and what can be justified in the name of saving one life at the expense of others.

David Collacci's narration gives Perry's Victorian setting its appropriate atmosphere, reading the prose with a measured gravity that suits the moral seriousness of the subject matter. His voice distinguishes the class and professional hierarchies that structure the novel's world, and his Hester has both the professional authority and the moral urgency the character requires. At just over ten hours, Corridors of the Night is a strong entry in the long-running series.