Tips and Resources From Your Anne Perry Book Club Friends:

With her long-running Charlotte and Thomas Pitt crime fiction series, Anne Perry extensively delved into the history of 19th century England alongside her intriguing mysteries. She returned to the era frequently, because as she wrote on her website, “I have continued with the Victorian mysteries because I have come to love both the characters and the period. I like the contrast between glamour and squalor, the endless variety in the capital of Empire, largest port in the world, with men and goods for every quarter of the earth, and the immense energy of optimism.” She added, “I have loved the whole series because it is in a way the end of history and the beginning of the modern world, a time in Europe of unprecedented challenge and change, a test of who we are, and who we wish to be.”

Perry said she began her other Victorian era series featuring the amnesiac detective William Monk, to explore a “darker character” and “to raise questions about responsibility, particularly that of a person for acts he cannot remember.”

Which of her two Victorian-era mystery series do you enjoy most? Or do you enjoy them both equally? What is it about the books that keeps you engaged? What do you think of the Daniel Pitt books featuring the son of Thomas and Charlotte? Have you read any of Perry’s more contemporary historical detective fiction series with Elena Standish (set pre-WWII) or Joseph Reavley (WWI)?