The Cater Street Hangman

Series: Thomas and Charlotte Pitt, Book 1

By: Anne Perry / Narrated By: Davina Porter

Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins

Nothing says Budding Romance like a grotesque and mutilated corpse… :)

Okay, so here it is, see…

I’ve an account over on Kobo for audiobooks where the credits are fairly equal in price to Audible, and they have AWEsome sales. That said, I raaaaarely buy stuff from them as they do the unthinkable: A 10-hour audiobook takes up 1200+ MBs. Yessss, it takes forEVER for them to download, but YIKES! Whotheheck wants to use up that much storage for one lousy audiobook?!

Still, I’d listened to and reviewed my first Anne Perry with A Christmas Journey this past holiday season. It was really rather surprising. I’d been aware of her historical mysteries, but that Christmas audiobook? Oh good heavens: I did NOT expect the writing to be sooo emotionally evocative. Why, I’d likened it to Dickens in its ability to depict complete spiritual evolution.

So of COURSE whenst doing an entire week o’ various forms of mysteries, I HAD to throw in an Anne Perry. Uhm, I really should’ve checked my Library, cuz actually? Didn’t have it, had to use up one of the Kobo credits as they’d been piling up. Here it is: You get this from Kobo, you commit to close to 400 MB, which is crazy…

On to the story, shall we? where I had suuuch high hopes, and I p’raps came loaded with some high expectations (Things NOBODY should have lest they spend Life disappointed and resentful…). Was I disappointed? Wellll, maybe a tad as Lynn Messina does the intelligent woman sleuthing so very very well and enjoyably. Resentful? Not by a long shot: 10 hours just flew by, leaving me to have some serious fun on that single day I’d listened to it all in a go.

Things start with our introduction of our heroine, Charlotte. Right off the bat, we see that she’s quite the clever girl, all wanting to read the newspaper (Sooo unlike what her dearest papa thinks is proper for a lady) and such all. She covertly devours the news, and then she chucks it back from whence it came.

We also see her as quite the lovestruck girl, all calf-eyed about the husband of elder sister Sarah.

So there’s the set up, and oh, a young maid has been found strangled with a garrote, her corpse left out on the street. ‘Twon’t be the last body, and it barely causes a kerfuffle as, heck, just a maid and all that jolly rot. It’s only when things go awry that the family, fairly well-to-do, is troubled: An inspector turns up, and danged if he doesn’t know his place. OBVIOUSly, this rather shabby man, Inspector Pitt, has decidedly odd ways of behaving: Such as asking them questions after the murderer keeps on striking.

The game is afoot, and whilst EVERYbody is sick to death of going over minutiae after minutiae, it’s Charlotte answering his questions, like, all the bleedin’ time. Perhaps it’s because she’s such an intelligent young woman, and she’s bold as you please, and she raaaarely plays the whole: You’re Getting Above Your Station card. Odd too that she seems to be able to make her intelligence known, with shrewd observations, or with the occasional scathing remark (Dunno, the lass just seems to be able to speak her mind around the scruffy man—It’s as tho’ he doesn’t caaaare what he looks like…!).

I didn’t mind that Charlotte is a trifle passive, as what Victorian woman DID have agency? That said? What I DID mind was that the only thing Pitt did was sit back and let clues come to him, verrry little sleuthing done by him. It was all process of elimination, and the most aggravating thing was just how many times his advances came… with the discovery of yet ANOther corpse all mutilated and such. I mean, good cow, man!

Sooo, I’m dinging it here, but I shall add the caveat that I don’t know bubkes about crime solving in Victorian England. P’raps that’s how police work evolved? So there’s that.

Grousing aside, here is where I shall do nothing but praise the beJESus outta Davina Porter. I mean, can the woman do no wrong? She is always such a Plus to whatever material she’s given. The Cater Street Hangman has the genteel to go with the scoundrels, the fraught to go with the ever-proper and polite. Never does she falter on a male voice, and gosh she had Charlotte down pat. Noooo, I’ve yet to ding ANY performance by her, and I’m kinda sorta just waiting for The Day she mucks it up royal. I believe I’ll be waiting, huh?

Not m’ Fave romantic sleuths afoot, but it was definitely not without its charming moments.

And it was DEFinitely good enough to pick up the second when I spied it on sale.

…At Chirpbooks… so… >PHEW< !!!