More Mysteries: Anne Perry's A Sudden Fearful Death

Another mystery novel I read this week, under the guise of spring cleaning, was Anne Perry's A Sudden, Fearful Death. Like Ruth Rendell, Ms. Perry is much admired and much purchased, and I am happy to report that she is also a skillful writer. This novel is part of a Victorian London series centering around a retired policeman and a Crimean War veteran nurse. It is scrupulously free of anachronism, except, perhaps, for a sneaking disapproval of unjust policies and attitudes of the past. There may be no getting around that in a contemporary story. I'm not the fiction reader that I once was, or I would now be scouring bookstores and libraries for the rest of Perry's William Monk mysteries. (In any case, I would search in vain, for my local library now is the owner of one, count it, one, book in this series, the one I just finished.)

My Internet searches showed me that Anne Perry is interesting not only as an author, but also for her life story. Here are a few informative Web resources.

• The Wikipedia entry begins: "Anne Perry (born October 28, 1938), born Juliet Hulme in England, is a British historical novelist and convicted murderer (see also Parker-Hulme Murder)."
• The Official Anne Perry Website is slick, attractive, and content-rich, but the home page took five full minutes to load on my dial-up connection, and it contained nothing more than an author photo and site navigation links. Bad webmaster! Shame, shame!
• An interesting interview with Anne Perry, from Strand Magazine.