Pentecost Alley

by Anne Perry, Alexandra SWIEZAWSKA (Translator), Anne-Marie CARRIÈRE (Translator)

Overview

Deux ans après le massacre des prostituées de l'East End par Jack l'Éventreur, un tueur est de nouveau à l'œuvre dans le quartier de Whitechapel. Meurtres rituels dans les bas-fonds de Londres ? Qui sont les membres du Hellfire Club dont un insigne a été trouvé près du corps mutilé de la fille de joie ? Et en quoi ce fait divers, somme toute banal pour l'époque, réclame-t-il l'intervention du commissaire Thomas Pitt ? Ce dernier va se trouver confronté à la puissante famille des FitzJames dont l'influence à Londres est telle qu'il n'aura pas droit au moindre faux pas. Que vaut en effet la parole d'une prostituée contre celle d'un FitzJames ?

Traduit de l'anglais
par Alexandra Swiezawska
et Anne-Marie Carrière

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9782264057563
Publisher:	Univers Poche
Publication date:	08/23/2012
Sold by:	EDITIS - EBKS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	279
File size:	2 MB
Language:	French

About the Author

À L'ombre de la guillotine), la Première Guerre mondiale (la saga des Reavley), ou encore Byzance au XIIIe ( Du Sang sur la soie). Anne Perry vit au nord d'Inverness, en Écosse.

Hometown:

Portmahomack, Ross-shire, U.K

Date of Birth:

October 28, 1938

Place of Birth:

Blackheath, London England

Website:

http://www.anneperry.net

Editorial Reviews

The 16th Thomas and Charlotte Pitt mystery demonstrates Perry's trademark skill for enhancing well-designed mystery plots with convincing historical settings and cleverly drawn relationships among characters. In this outing, Pitt, last seen in Traitors Gate, tackles a case that could cost him his career. As it has been only two years since the unsolved Jack the Ripper murders, the Home Office anxiously anticipates the speedy arrest of the person who has murdered a Whitechapel prostitute with her own stocking. Finlay FitzJames, a young diplomat who is the son of a powerful merchant banker, is the prime suspect, even though the evidence against him is circumstantial: an old Hellfire Club badge, inscribed with Finlay's name, was found under the prostitute in bed, and cufflinks with his initials were discovered in the room. While Pitt grapples with this politically sensitive case, his sister-in-law, Emily Radley, makes friends with Finlay's younger sister, a social butterfly named Tallulah. Thanks to Pitt's diligence (and Emily's and Tallulah's meddling), the case is closed. Or so it seems until another very similar murder occurs. Whitechapel residents are terrified anew, Parliament is filled with grumblings, the Queen conveys her displeasure and newspaper reporters are turning the investigation into a case study in police incompetence and corruption. As Perry edges toward her surprise ending, she crafts her tale with elegance, narrative depth and gratifying scope. BOMC main selection. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Thomas and Charlotte Pitt take on Jack the Ripper in this latest in Perry's best-selling Victorian mystery series.

Library Journal

In what may well be the finest story yet in an already outstanding series, Perry offers a thoroughly entertaining, masterfully written Victorian murder mystery featuring Inspector Thomas Pitt. Seamlessly blending the customs, speech patterns, ambience, and social problems of turn-of-the-century London into an intriguing story, Perry has Pitt facing his most difficult case yet when a prostitute is brutally tortured and killed. All the evidence points to Finlay Fitzjames as the murderer. Fitzjames, son of a prominent London businessman, is on his way to an ambassadorship, so no one--least of all Pitt, who knows a politically sensitive case when he sees one--wants to believe the young man could have committed such a horrible crime. When the prostitute's pimp confesses, everyone is relieved. But no sooner is the pimp tried and hanged for murder than a second prostitute is killed in the same brutal manner as the first. Pitt is devastated, knowing an innocent man has been hanged. Now he must track down the real killer, who is as devious, diabolical, and elusive as any he has ever pursued. Perry has created a superbly plotted, grippingly suspenseful period piece filled with intriguing characters and fascinating descriptions of the manners and customs of Victorian London. Buy plenty.

Emily Melton

Superintendent Thomas Pitt's rise to commander of the Bow Street station has carried him above the sordid run of London crime, but when Whitechapel prostitute Ada McKinley is tortured and strangled two years after the reign of Jack the Ripper, a cufflink and a button from the defunct Hellfire Club on the scene make the case sensitive enough to bring in Pitt. Both articles are traced to Finlay FitzJames, a young diplomat whose wealthy, ruthless father Augustus's massive contempt for Pitt and his mission casts his son in an even more suspicious light. Pitt, keenly aware of the pressure to arrest someone else, is relieved when his own wife Charlotte and her sister Emily Radley, insinuating themselves into the confidence of Finlay's sister Tallulah, uncover an alibi Finlay cannot make public—and even more relieved when he extracts a confession from a pimp that seems to close the case. A trial follows, as well as a speedy execution—and then, to Pitt's horror, there's a second murder exactly like the first, linked to Finlay by still another scrap of haberdashery. If Finlay is innocent, who is so determined to incriminate him? And if he's guilty, how can Pitt bring him to book when he's being ridiculed all over town for hanging the wrong man?

Repetitious and yet perfunctory in probing the suspects; and bits of the truth, at least, are obvious from the beginning. Still, the mystification, and the intensity of Pitt's dilemma, are genuine. Altogether, Perry's best book since Defend and Betray

Kirkus Reviews