Dorchester Terrace

In 1896, a ransom-exchange plot to recover a kidnapped woman goes catastrophically wrong on Jacob's Island, leaving Superintendent Thomas Pitt and his Special Branch colleagues fighting a potential traitor in their own ranks while simultaneously investigating a possible conspiracy that could trigger a war. Victor Narraway pursues a separate thread involving the mysterious death of Serafina Monserrat, a woman who once held sensitive political secrets and may have been killed for what her dementia allowed her to speak aloud. Anne Perry's twenty-seventh Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novel weaves the domestic threat into a larger international context.

Amy Scanlon narrates this entry in Perry's long-running Victorian series with the period precision and atmospheric detail that the material requires. Her performance distinguishes the multiple investigations and the large cast of political players with consistent clarity, and the moral weight of a world that can be consumed by a single assassin's bullet is given its proper gravity. At just over fourteen hours, Dorchester Terrace is a richly constructed entry in one of historical mystery's most enduring series.