Bethlehem Road - Anne Perry

   1990; 313 pages.  Book 10 (out of 32) in the “Charlotte and Thomas Pitt” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Murder-Mystery; Historical Fiction.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

 

    It was a gruesome murder, right there on Westminster Bridge.  The poor bloke first had his throat slashed, then he was tied up to a lamppost.  It made him look like he was leaning against it.

 

    But the real shocker was the fact that the dead man was a member of Parliament, and had been in a meeting there up until a few minutes ago.  The victim was literally walking home from work, even though it was late at night.

 

    For Inspector Thomas Pitt of the Bow Street Police Force, it means that there is tremendous pressure to solve the case, and fast.  The daily newspapers will be running screaming headlines, which will terrify lords and commoners.  Within 24 hours, everyone will be demanding this case be solved immediately.

 

    Sadly, Pitt’s investigation will find promising leads few and far between.  Can things get any worse?

 

    Well maybe.  Suppose a second M.P. (“Member of Parliament”) were to get killed in exactly the same way, while walking across Westminster Bridge, late at night, on his way home.

 

What’s To Like...

    I loved the historical fiction aspect of Bethlehem Road.  As a tourist, I’ve been to the area London portrayed here, but that was in the daytime and in sunshiny weather.  To be immersed in it in Victorian times, at night, and in pea soup fog, was quite different. 

 

    Politically, the Victorian-era England was at a crucial time.  Ireland was demanding independence. Movements were afoot for prison reform, “poor law” reform, and industrial reform.  Anarchists and socialists were carrying out acts of violence, and ordinary citizens chafed under the rigid social class system.  Perhaps most significant of all, the movement for equal rights for women, including the right to vote, was gathering a large number of grassroots supporters, including Charlotte Pitt.

 

    The action starts right away.  Hetty, a street prostitute, propositions the first victim, only to discover he’s dead as a doornail.  Inspector Thomas Pitt discovers there are all sorts of possible motives this murder, including political, familial, accidental, and psychiatric ones.  His wife, Charlotte, also gets drawn into the investigation without his knowledge, on behalf of a friend of one of the main suspects.

 

    There are a number of red herrings along the way for the reader and Thomas Pitt to come to grips with.  A couple of plot twists finally lead to a tension-filled ending, resolving both who was the so-called “Westminster Cutthroat”, and why they did it.  Overall, I’d call Bethlehem Road more of a police procedural than a whodunit.  More on this in a bit.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Kip (v.) : To take a nap; to sleep.

Others: Tweeny (n.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.4*/5, based on 1,636 ratings and 151 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.97*/5, based on 4,620 ratings and 208 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “Anarchists?” Pitt pressed.

    Deacon shook his head.  “Nah!  This in’t the way their mind goes.  Stick a shiv in some geezer on Westminster Bridge!  Wot good’d that do ‘em?  They’d go for a bomb, summink showy.  Loves bombs, they do.  All talk, they are—never do nuffink so quiet.”

    “Then what is the word down here?”

    “Croaked by someone as ‘ated ‘him, personal like.”  Deacon opened his little eyes wide.  “In’t no flam—I makes me livin’ by blowin’, I’d be a muck sniped in a munf if I done that!  In’t quick enough to thieve no more.  I’d ‘ave ter try a scaldrum dodge, an that in’t no way ter live!”   (loc. 1046)

 

    “Who should she say she was searching for?  It must not be someone in such circulation that Zenobia should have found her for herself.  Ah!  Beatrice Allenby was just the person.  She had married a Belgian cheesemaker and gone to live in Bruges!  No one could be expected to know that as a matter of course.  And Mary Carfax would enjoy relating that: it was a minor scandal, girls of good family might marry German barons or Italian counts, but not Belgians, and certainly not cheesemakers of any sort!  (loc. 2535)

 

Kindle Details…

    Bethlehem Road presently sells for $8.99 at Amazon.  The other e-books in the series go anywhere from $1.99 to $12.99.  That price range also holds true for Anne Perry’s 24-book William Monk detective series, some of which I’ve read and enjoyed in the past.

 

 

“Those who hold power have never in all history been inclined to relinquish it willingly.”  (loc. 2957)

    There is only a negligible amount of cussing in Bethlehem Road.  I noted just five instances, all of them four-lettered words of the “mild” eschatological variety.

 

    There was one missing comma in the e-book format: “sorry constable”, and one spelling mangling: “Ametiryst/Amethyst”, but I have a feeling that second one was a scanning boo-boo.

 

    My biggest quibble with Bethlehem Road was the murder-mystery plotline.  For most of the book it felt like none of the suspects and leads were plausible.  The end of the book was looming, and magically, out of left field, comes a whole new, promising angle.  True, Thomas and the reader both have to pick up on this, but it was way too much of a convenient coincidence.  Curse those dei ex machina!

 

    So read this book for its excellent historical fiction insights and accept the fact that you and the Bow Street Police Department are not going to solve this mystery until the deus ex machina pops out of nowhere.

 

    Which is how police procedurals are usually structured.

 

    7 Stars.  One last bit of wit.  At one point Thomas Pitt requests some records from one of the suspects.  The man complies and will have copies made on something he calls “an awful contraption” and which “sounds like a hundred urchins in hobnail boots”.  What on earth is he talking about?

 

    A recently invented thing called a “typewriter.”