Defend and Betray

When the beautiful wife of a celebrated general confesses to his murder in front of witnesses at a dinner party, investigator William Monk, nurse Hester Latterly, and barrister Oliver Rathbone find themselves working together for the first time in the third Monk novel, desperately trying to understand why Alexandra Carlyon refuses to explain herself. The family's silence, the accused's impenetrable composure, and the social structures that protect powerful men from inquiry all stand between the investigators and the truth in a case where the obvious answer is almost certainly wrong.

Davina Porter narrates this Agatha Award-winning novel with the authority and period precision that Anne Perry's Victorian England demands. Her voices across the ensemble are clearly differentiated, and her performance captures the particular horror of a society that requires women to remain silent about their suffering. The courtroom climax that closes the novel is among Perry's finest narrative achievements, and Porter's delivery makes its revelations feel both inevitable and genuinely shocking. At over sixteen hours, Defend and Betray is a richly realized audio experience.