The story gets increasingly twisted by a secondary plot involving Monk's reformed-minded wifewho discovers medicine is being pilfered from the hospital where she volunteers. Through HesterPerry fulfills what might be her primary purpose — to comment on Victorian social conditions....Perry carries the suspense right into the last few pages. A twisted rootindeed. —Christian Science Monitor
No one is better known for portraying Victorian life and social mores.
When a law flies in the face of moral justice, can a person be condemned for defying it—even to the point of murder? Anne Perry argues the issue with uncommon eloquence...
A novel whose supsense remains high until the final pages...Anne Parry is [a] master of crime fiction, who rarely fails to deliver a strong story and a colorful cast of characters.
In this 10th entry in the popular series featuring prickly English investigator William Monk and his equally prickly bride, nurse Hester Latterly (A Breach of Promise, etc.), Perry mulls over the moral justification of criminal acts. Just back from his honeymoon in the summer of 1860, Monk tries to locate Mrs. Miriam Gardiner, a comely widow who inexplicably fled in a coach from her wealthy young fianc 's home. Monk's search takes him to Hampstead Heath, where the coachman's body is found--murdered, he deduces, by a single blow to the head. Could Miriam have struck that deadly blow as she fled, and if so, why? Cornered at last, Miriam refuses to explain her behavior or implicate the coachman's murderer, even though Monk suspects she's the victim of some atrocity. Meanwhile, Hester gears up to defend Cleo Anderson, a saintly nurse who admits to filching hospital supplies to treat impoverished war veterans. Plot mechanics grind away as Perry strains to connect the two crimes, resolving matters with an ending that reads like Henry Fielding without the laughs. Fans of earlier Monk and Latterly mysteries may enjoy Perry's sometimes overwrought depiction of the two-career couple negotiating who cooks supper, but the many other anachronisms just don't wash (says Hester's colleague: "you want to have nurses visit the poor in their homes? You are fifty years before your time"). Despite the characters' tendency to sermonize self-righteously, Perry's theme is the hazy nature of guilt--a topic sure to intrigue those who've followed her career. For thrills, however, readers should turn to other books in the series. Mystery Guild selection; Random House audio. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Series entry No. 10 featuring Victorian England investigator William Monk follows two twisted mysteries until they merge. Lucius Stourbridge hires Monk to find his runaway fianc e, Miriam Gardiner, and missing coachman, James Treadwell, who is found bludgeoned to death. William's new wife, Hester, hospital volunteer and war nurse, becomes embroiled in a mystery surrounding drugs missing from the hospital pharmacy. Although lifelike, the characters drone on about the nature of guilt, medical standards, veterans' rights, and the status of women. Terrence Hardiman's dramatic reading doesn't quite save it. Purchase only for Monk fans.-Sandy Glover, West Linn P.L., OR Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
The case before Hester and Monk in Anne Perry's latest, The Twisted Root is the first case they must solve together since their marriage, and it's a memorable one...And as always, Perry manages to entertain as Hester and Monk race to find evidence that will barrister Oliver Rathbone save the silent, suffering Miriam from the gallows.
Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine
Now that he's savoring the joys of marriage to unlicensed nurse Hester Latterly, enquiry agent William Monk (A Breach of Promise, 1998, etc.) is all the quicker to feel the distress of Lucius Stourbridge, whose fiancée, bewitching widow Miriam Gardiner, vanished from the middle of a croquet match at the Stourbridge home in Cleveland Square. And when James Treadwell, the Stourbridge coachman who carried the lady off at her request, is found murdered near Hampstead Heath, Miriam's peril is only deepened: she's arrested for his murder. Nor does Hester's own subplot offer any relief, since her investigation into the disappearance of anaesthetic medicines from North London Hospital leads her straight to the woman the police will call Miriam's conspirator. Even after a second shocking murder whose motives remain stubbornly obscure, the facts of the case seem simple and damning, and Monk's friend (and Hester's former suitor) Sir Oliver Rathbone, stonewalled by his silent clients, accepts the defense brief without a clue how to proceed. But Perry—though her main mission, as usual, is to criticize the 19th century by showing how much more enlightened the 20th is about medical standards, veterans' rights, and the endless duel over the status of women—manages a climactic thunderbolt that will leave even her most loyal fans gasping. What fearful secret could lead Miriam to prefer trial and execution to telling her story? No writer since Agatha Christie has been so good at teasing her audience with such obvious questions until choosing to ring down the curtain. (Mystery Guild selection)
Elegance and a sense of luxury characterize the reading of the latest detective case of William Monk, who is called on to find why Miriam Gardiner ran away from her own engagement party at the home of her fiancé. The elegance is not from the written characters but from the performance of Terrence Hardiman, who creates an atmosphere of Victorian London that colors our listening with the dark foliage of summer and the light of morning. His extraordinary talent for seeing the word, translating it in his head, making a picture of it, and then offering it for our acceptance is a whole new dimension of narration. In fact, the story is secondary to his telling of it. Its length is made pleasurable with the promise that Hardiman's artistry will continue throughout the 10 cassettes. J.P. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine
DEC 02/JAN 03 - AudioFile
