Murder For Love

anne perry

It is the last decade of the twentieth century, and the sensations associated with love have changed little over the ages. However, the conventions of love-its manners and mores-have shifted and mutated dramatically from one era to the next. Which is why, when the queen of the Victorian mystery novel, Anne Perry, delivers a delicious little puzzle with its origins in the nuances of respectable nineteenth-century courtship, careful attention must be paid to love's past and not its present. What may seem merely quaint today, when a man's word or a woman's honor apparently has no more than casual value, was once a matter of deadly importance.

In a world of discreet butlers, polished silver trays, and cravats "tied to perfection, " Anne Perry is a peerless companion, as consummate an eavesdropper on this vanished, fascinating society as the blackmailer of her title.

Already one of the most popular mystery writers of the past couple of decades, the author has received enormous-if unwanted-attention for her recently discovered and revealed past. As a teenager in New Zealand, she and her best friend murdered the friend's mother while under the influence of a subsequently banned prescription drug. Her exemplary life since then has produced nothing more notorious than fictional violence that has brought her a vast readership.

– O. P.