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Searching... Stayton Public Library | M PERRY | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Compellingly, with the narrative elegance that has placed her Victorian mystery novels on best-selling fiction lists worldwide, Edgar Award-winning novelist Anne Perry turns her unerring historical eye to Paris 1792. Revolution is yielding to Terror, and the city is hungry--for justice, for vengeance, for bread. So, too, is Celie Deleure, a servant in the household of the celebrated Madame de Stael, when her infant son suffers an inexplicable death.
Author Notes
Anne Perry was born Juliet Hume on October 28, 1938 in Blackheath, London.
Sent to Christchurch, New Zealand to recover from a childhood case of severe pneumonia, she became very close friends with another girl, Pauline Parker. When Perry's family abandoned her, she had only Parker to turn to, and when the Parkers planned to move from New Zealand, Parker asked that Perry be allowed to join them. When Parker's mother disagreed, Perry and Parker bludgeoned her to death. Perry eventually served five and a half years in an adult prison for the crime.
Once she was freed, she changed her name and moved to America, where she eventually became a writer. Her first Victorian novel, The Cater Street Hangman, was published in 1979. Although the truth of her past came out when the case of Mrs. Parker's murder was made into a movie (Heavenly Creatures), Perry is still a popular author and continues to write. She has written over 50 books and short story collections including the Thomas Pitt series, the William Monk series, and the Daniel Pitt series. Her story, Heroes, won the 2001 Edgar Award for Best Short Story. Her title's Blind Justice and The Angel Court Affair made The New York Times Best Seller List.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Departing from her usual Victorian milieu (the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series and the William Monk series), Edgar-winner Perry has concocted a neat tale of survival and revenge at novella length, set in revolutionary France. It's the summer of 1792, three years after the fall of the Bastille, and the natives of Paris are increasingly discontented with the food shortages, the arbitrary mob rule, the lack of effective leadership by the Commune. On the border, meanwhile, the Prussians threaten invasion. Against this ominous backdrop, Celie, a young widowed servant in the employ of the real-life Madame de Stal, suffers a personal tragedy. Celie's baby son, Jean-Pierre, dies in his crib, unattended by the friend, Amandine, in whose care she entrusted him. Later Celie learns that Amandine's lover, Georges, lured her away for a tryst during the fatal hour. Giving in to her worst feelings, Celie betrays the negligent lovers to the authorities, who are all too quick to arrest anyone on suspicion of treason. But not all is as it seems, and as the Prussian army marches on Paris and Marat sets the Terror in full bloody swing, the nobler side of Celie's nature comes to the fore as she contrives to have a little justice done amid the horrors. While slight in comparison to her novels, this spare, well-crafted novella should please Perry's fans. (Feb. 1) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
The second in Carroll & Grafs series of vest-pocket fiction for publisher Otto Penzler (following Ed McBains Driving Lessons, p. 838) unfurls an anecdote of condign revenge for the strongest reason of all. One minute widowed Celie Deleures infant son Jean-Pierre was sleeping peacefully in his crib; the next he was dead for no apparent reason except the neglect of Amandine Latour, the friend Celie had asked to stand in for her absent nurse. When Thérèse the seamstress tells her that Amandine would never have left the baby unattended if it hadnt been for the amorous attentions of her lover Georges Coigny, Celies grief sharpens to a quest for retribution. And even though shes only a servant of the celebrated Madame Germaine de Staël, the author and bon vivant who heads Pariss wittiest salon, and Georges is a self-assured and powerful man, history has offered her the perfect moment for vengeance: the Revolution is just turning into the Terror, a time when the king and queen have been imprisoned for their own protection from angry mobs, and a single word of denunciation from a concerned citizen like Celie is enough to send suspected counter-revolutionaries to the guillotine. Perry pads this extended short story with just enough thrilling local color and 20/20 historical hindsight to make it a dish best gulped in a sittingor sent back to the kitchen.