A Sunless Sea

Starred review from July 30, 2012
At the start of Perry’s searing 18th William Monk Victorian historical (after 2011’s Acceptable Loss), repeated screams prompt Monk, commander of the Thames River Police, to start rowing for shore. He disembarks at Limehouse Pier, where he encounters a hysterical woman pointing to an eviscerated female corpse. After identifying the victim as Zenia Gadney, the detective learns from Gadney’s neighbors that she used to have a regular gentleman caller, who stopped visiting a few months earlier. Later identified as Dr. Joel Lambourn, the doctor took his own life soon after the government rejected a report he’d written advocating accurate labeling on opium products. Lambourn’s researches prove to be of vital importance in cracking the murder case. After Monk begrudgingly arrests a suspect, his continued police work is supplemented by the courtroom efforts of Sir Oliver Rathbone, who has been retained for the defense. Much more than a whodunit, this book, possibly the author’s best yet, is especially effective at providing a nuanced look at a vital controversy of the day. Agent: Donald Maass, Donald Maass Literary.

August 15, 2012
Cmdr. William Monk, of the Thames River Police (Execution Dock, 2009, etc.), continues his quest to cure Victorian London of all its social ills--this time, of the horrors of unregulated opium. No one would care tuppence about the murder of a woman Monk has trouble even identifying as Zenia Gadney, a reputed widow of uncertain means, if she hadn't been killed in such a spectacular fashion: bashed to death, gutted and left on Limehouse Pier. But the news that the monthly visitor who paid Zenia's household expenses for 15 years was Dr. Joel Lambourn turns the case into a hot potato. Before he was found dead in Greenwich Park, Lambourn had been conducting research into opium use on behalf of a government commission chaired by rising political star Sinden Bawtry, a commission considering the regulation of opium whose members included Barclay Herne, the husband of Lambourn's sister, Amity. The verdict on Lambourn's death was suicide, but Dinah, his widow, tells Monk he was murdered. Little does she know that her insistence that Monk reopen the case will lead to her own arrest for Zenia's murder. Begging Sir Oliver Rathbone to defend her, she sets up an impossible situation: The more Rathbone learns about Lambourn's research into the evils of opium--especially the threat of its injection directly into the bloodstream through those villainous new hollow-stemmed needles--the more difficult he realizes it will be to make a case against powerful forces deeply invested in keeping the drug freely flowing. Lumbering, repetitive and preachy. But the final surprise packs a punch, and the overlong courtroom sequences show how much Perry's learned about legal testimony since Cain His Brother (1995).

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Starred review from September 15, 2012
In Victorian London, anyone could go to the local druggist's and pick up a pennyworth of opium from the open shelves. The drug was promoted as a panacea for many small ills, and its devastating effects were hushed up through the efforts of many of Britain's wealthiest families, whose fortunes had been built on the opium trade. Opium is the focus of Perry's latest William Monk mystery, and the horror surrounding this social evil deepens as the well-crafted novel progresses. Monk, long a member of the Metropolitan Police, is now in command of the Thames River Police, which expands Perry's atmospheric reach to include the brooding, jumbled warren of river traffic. The gutted body of a woman is discovered on Limehouse Pier. Monk's street canvassing of local prostitutes reveals a connection between the dead woman and a doctor who committed suicide some weeks before. Apparently, the doctor was devastated when his extensive report on the evils of opium use was rejected by the government. Monk's reach into this mystery is extended by his wife, Hester, a nurse who runs a women's clinic and who has contacts among both doctors and street people. The investigation concludes in a hold-your-breath trial, starring Monk's old friend, Sir Oliver Rathbone. The eighteenth Monk novel is a brilliant Victorian police procedural in which well-realized characters and settings are fascinating in themselves. And, as in all her Monk novels, Perry exhumes and exhibits yet another of the Victorian era's social evils.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)