Highgate Rise

Zusatztext When it comes to the Victorian mystery! Anne Perry has proved that nobody does it better. The San Diego Union-Tribune Give her a good murder and a shameful social evil! and Anne Perry can write a Victorian mystery that would make Dickens's eyes pop. The New York Times Book Review Perry gets the Victorian mood just right. . . . Settle in with this one on a rainy day. Booklist Descriptions of London's Upstairs/Downstairs society [are] historically illuminating. St. Petersburg Times Rounded out by a host of lively characters! this is a memorable tale. Publishers Weekly Informationen zum Autor Anne Perry was the bestselling author of two acclaimed series set in Victorian England: the William Monk novels and the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novels. She was also the author of a series featuring Charlotte and Thomas Pitt's son, Daniel, as well as the Elena Standish series; a series of five World War I novels; twenty-one holiday novels; and a historical novel, The Sheen on the Silk, set in the Byzantine Empire. Anne Perry died in 2023. Klappentext Clemency Shaw, the wife of a prominent doctor, has died in a tragic fire in the peaceful suburb of Highgate. But the blaze was set by an arsonist, and it is unclear whether she or Dr. Shaw was the intended victim-or did the doctor himself set the blaze in order to inherit his wife's large fortune? Baffled by the scarcity of clues in this terrible crime, Inspector Thomas Pitt turns to the people who had been closest to the couple-Clemency's stuffy but distinguished relatives. Meanwhile, Pitt's wellborn wife, Charlotte, retraces the dangerous path that Clemency walked in the last months of her life, finding herself enmeshed in a sinister web that stretches from the lowest slums to the loftiest centers of power. Zusammenfassung Clemency Shaw! the wife of a prominent doctor! has died in a tragic fire in the peaceful suburb of Highgate. But the blaze was set by an arsonist! and it is unclear whether she or Dr. Shaw was the intended victimor did the doctor himself set the blaze in order to inherit his wife's large fortune? Baffled by the scarcity of clues in this terrible crime! Inspector Thomas Pitt turns to the people who had been closest to the coupleClemency's stuffy but distinguished relatives. Meanwhile! Pitt's wellborn wife! Charlotte! retraces the dangerous path that Clemency walked in the last months of her life! finding herself enmeshed in a sinister web that stretches from the lowest slums to the loftiest centers of power. ...

ldquo;When it comes to the Victorian mystery, Anne Perry has proved that nobody does it better.”—*The San Diego Union-Tribune

• “Give her a good murder and a shameful social evil, and Anne Perry can write a Victorian mystery that would make Dickens’s eyes pop.”—The New York Times Book Review
   
  “Perry gets the Victorian mood just right. . . . Settle in with this one on a rainy day.”—Booklist
   
  “Descriptions of London’s Upstairs/Downstairs society [are] historically illuminating.”—St. Petersburg Times
   
  “Rounded out by a host of lively characters, this is a memorable tale.”—Publishers Weekly

Auteur

Anne Perry was the bestselling author of two acclaimed series set in Victorian England: the William Monk novels and the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novels. She was also the author of a series featuring Charlotte and Thomas Pitt's son, Daniel, as well as the Elena Standish series; a series of five World War I novels; twenty-one holiday novels; and a historical novel, The Sheen on the Silk, set in the Byzantine Empire. Anne Perry died in 2023.

Texte du rabat

Clemency Shaw, the wife of a prominent doctor, has died in a tragic fire in the peaceful suburb of Highgate. But the blaze was set by an arsonist, and it is unclear whether she or Dr. Shaw was the intended victim-or did the doctor himself set the blaze in order to inherit his wife's large fortune? Baffled by the scarcity of clues in this terrible crime, Inspector Thomas Pitt turns to the people who had been closest to the couple-Clemency's stuffy but distinguished relatives. Meanwhile, Pitt's wellborn wife, Charlotte, retraces the dangerous path that Clemency walked in the last months of her life, finding herself enmeshed in a sinister web that stretches from the lowest slums to the loftiest centers of power.

Échantillon de lecture
INSPECTOR THOMAS PITT STARED at the smoking ruins of the house, oblivious of the steady rain drenching him, plastering his hair over his forehead and running between his turned-up coat collar and his knitted muffler in a cold dribble down his back. He could still feel the heat coming from the mounds of blackened bricks. The water dripped from broken arches and sizzled where it hit the embers, rising in thin curls of steam.
 
Even from what was left of it he could see that it had been a gracious building, somebody’s home, well constructed and elegant. Now there was little left but the servants’ quarters.
 
Beside him Constable James Murdo shifted from one foot to the other. He was from the local Highgate station and he resented his superiors having called in a man from the city, even one with as high a reputation as Pitt’s. They had hardly had a chance to deal with it themselves; there was no call to go sending for help this early—whatever the case proved to be. But his opinion had been ignored, and here was Pitt, scruffy, ill-clad apart from his boots, which were beautiful. His pockets bulged with nameless rubbish, his gloves were odd, and his face was smudged with soot and creased with sadness.
 
“Reckon it started almost midnight, sir,” Murdo said, to show that his own force was efficient and had already done all that could be expected. “A Miss Dalton, elderly lady down on St. Alban’s Road, saw it when she woke at about quarter past one. It was already burning fiercely and she raised the alarm, sent her maid to Colonel Anstruther’s next door. He has one of those telephone instruments. And they were insured, so the fire brigade arrived about twenty minutes later, but there wasn’t much they could do. By then all the main house was alight. They got water from the Highgate Ponds”—he waved his arm—“just across the fields there.”
 
Pitt nodded, picturing the scene in his mind, the fear, the blistering heat driving the men backwards, the frightened horses, the canvas buckets passed from hand to hand, and the uselessness of it all. Everything would be shrouded in smoke and red with the glare as sheets of flame shot skywards and beams exploded with a roar, sending sparks high into the darkness. The stench of burning was still in the air, making the eyes smart and the back of the throat ache.
 
Unconsciously he wiped at a piece of smut on his cheek, and made it worse.
 
“And the body?” he asked.
 
Suddenly rivalry vanished as Murdo remembered the men stumbling out with the stretcher, white-faced. On it had been grotesque remains, burned so badly it was no longer even whole—and yet hideously, recognizably human. Murdo found his voice shaking as he replied.
 
“We believe it was Mrs. Shaw, sir; the wife of the local doctor, who owns the house. He’s also the police surgeon, so we got a general practitioner from Hampstead, but he couldn’t tell us much. But I don’t think anyone could. Dr. Shaw’s at a neighbor’s now, a Mr. Amos Lindsay.” He nodded up the Highgate Rise towards West Hill. “That house.”
 
“Was he hurt?” Pitt asked, still looking at the ruins.
 
“No sir. He was out on a medical call. Woman giving birth—Dr.…