Kirkus Review

A hearty mystery/romance in which a household of women in 1881 London, bred to good works and sipping tea behind the bombazine curtain of Victorian purdah, experience some liberating enlightenment as well as tragedy. It all begins when five young women--including one of the Ellison family housemaids--are horribly murdered in the foggy streets outside the staid Ellison home. Inside that home, daughters Charlotte and Emily and Sarah are kept on a tight rein--by banker papa Edward and Sarah's easy-going husband Dominic. But the Victorian facades begin to crumble when police Inspector Pitt arrives to ask questions about those murders: he's an informal upstart who intrigues shrewdly flirtatious Emily (who has set her bonnet for handsome Lord Ashworth) and especially rebellious, curious Charlotte. Then Inspector Pitt's investigations begin drawing closer and closer to home, and while suspicion flickers over Ashworth, Dominic, and even upright Edward, the women are treated to a view of some dry rot on the masculine side of the double standard. There's a final tragedy within the family, and at last Charlotte is wrenched from the arms of the murderer into those of Inspector Pitt. You may well spot the killer before then--but Perry's easy, irreverent Victoriana is the real attraction here, not the mystery. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.