[.ca] Long Spoon Lane (Thomas and Charlotte Pitt) (ISBN 1597373400)

Good...but what's with the editing?:
Having caught a second wind, Perry continues what she started in Seven Dials by taking familiar characters to new and exciting places (psychologically speaking.) She's really revitalized the series. However, I wonder if she's switched editors with this one, and for the worse. I noticed a large number of typos and either clunky or downright erroneous wordings that never existed in the previous Pitt novels. It was distracting enough for me to knock one star off my review.

Past Meets Present in Another Anne Perry Gem:
Long Spoon Lane: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel, by Anne Perry was another excellent mystery set in Perry's evocative Victorian setting. The mystery in this novel was not of the "knock your socks off who would have ever thought it" type. It was, rather, a very evenly paced novel in which many of the developments involved terrorism and the government's response to the terrorists' acts. It was very interesting to read about a piece of legislation that some of the characters supported. The legislation involved giving the police easier rules and access to search people and their homes. The obvious allusion to America's Patriot Act and the debate it has spawned is an excellent piece of the overall picture. This book focused on Thomas primarily, and his relationship with one of his true enemies. His Professor Moriarty if you will. I recommend this book and give it a solid and well deserved 4 out of 5 stars.

Bugged by Tellman:
This intricate novel with its bombings and Parliamentary debates about increased police power have obvious echoes of our own time. (Patriot Act, anyone?). I liked the theme of Pitt's having to cooperate with archenemy Voisey, but Thomas comes perilously close to James Bond territory in his miraculous escape. What bothered me was Tellman. In the previous book he was Inspector; now he is Sergeant. Did Wetron bust him or is this just sloppy editing? Inquiring minds want to know. And I couldn't believe Wetron trusted him as far as he did Still, an absorbing read.

Not my favorite Anne Perry book:
I usually love Anne Perry Books. I eat them up as she turns them out no matter which series is published, but I couldn't wait to finish this one. It just wasn't interesting. The usual historical data was prevelant, but the mystery itself left something to be desired. Kind of boring and I was glad to be finished so that I could move on to the next book.

"Most (policemen) are honorable, but corruption begets corruption.":
I've been annoyed for some time -- for the past dozen volumes in this generally first-rate series set in London of the 1880s and `90s -- that the author had served her readers so poorly by inventing the Inner Circle, a secret society trying to take control of Great Britain. The conspiracy became a deus ex machina upon which Perry could blame anything, which removed the necessity of proper plot construction, and Pitt stopped being a cop and became a secret agent, a sort of ur-Bond, in the employ of Special Branch. Sir Charles Voisey, the head of the Inner Circle, especially, was presented as the personification of melodramatic evil -- Snidely Whiplash with a nice house, servants, and a carriage. Pitt (and his boss, Narraway) orchestrated Voisey's fall from power, in any case, and in this somewhat wild-eyed volume, Voisey's rival, Superintendent Wetron, spins his own conspiracy: A group of anarchists (read "terrorists") are accused (justly) of blowing up houses and (unjustly) callously killing civilians. Wetron's motive is to ensure passage of an Act of Parliament giving the police greatly increased firepower, as well as enormous stop-and-search powers and the authority to enter private homes and ask any questions they like. "Snatched from the headlines," as they say. (I imagine Perry is no fan of the present U.S. neocon administration.) The immediate result is to push Pitt and Voisey into a grudging and very suspicious partnership in order to defeat the bill, each for his own reasons. That part of the story is quite well done in its depiction of the very opposite characters of the two men -- and Perry makes up for the unbelievability of much of the rest of the plot by rather decisively killing off the entire Inner Circle conspiracy at the end. Ya-hoo!