Bluegate Fields
(Libby/OverDrive eBook, Kindle)

Perry's Victorian mysteries are equally enthralling for their sophisticated plots, substantial characters, attention to the details of daily life, and criticism of the hypocrisies of the upper classes. While Resurrection Row, an earlier Charlotte and Thomas Pitt mystery, looked at the indifference to poverty, Bluegate Fields focuses on the problem of prostitution, specifically the abuse of young boys by so-called gentlemen. When a 16-year-old from a prominent family is murdered, his stiff, humorless tutor is blamed, and a teenaged male prostitute testifies to having a long-running relationship with the man. Inspector Pitt and his spunky wife realize the tutor is being framed and set out to clear him and find the real killer. As always, the characters, especially Charlotte, are well drawn, and the portrait of the smug, insulated society infuriating, but here the identity of the murderer is a bit obvious. Davina Porter does her usual splendid job. Recommended for popular collections.-Michael Adams, CUNY Graduate Ctr. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Several of Perry's chatty Victorian mysteries for Inspector Pitt (with assists from spunky aristocrat-wife Charlotte) have ended up with revelations of sexual shenanigans. This time the sensationalism is delivered right from the start: the body of upper-class, 15-year-old Arthur Waybourne is found in a slum sewer, with medical evidence of syphilis and homosexual rape. Soon on trial and convicted: Arthur's taciturn, unlikable, married tutor Maurice Jerome--with damning circumstantial evidence from other tutor-ees, from a teenage homosexual prostitute (who claims that Jerome was a regular), from a female prostitute (who claims that Jerome was a voyeur, with Arthur in tow). But both the Inspector and his well-connected wife have their doubts about Jerome's guilt, suspecting that he may have been framed: both prostitute-witnesses soon disappear, one of them turning up dead. And, despite opposition from the blue-blooded powers-that-be, the Pitts (working independently from each other) try to nail the real culprit--obvious to the reader almost from the start--before poor, surly Jerome is executed. Talky and repetitious, with at least 100 pages' worth of recapitulation and padding--but readers who like a blend of cheerful chattingess (often anachronistic) and lurid doings will continue to find Perry a leisurely, readable entertainer, if hardly a creator of authentic period-mystery. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.