Southampton Row (Charlotte and Thomas Pitt #22) by Anne Perry

This is the twenty second novel in a series of thirty-two featuring Thomas and Charlotte Pitt.

Southampton Row is a sequel to the previously published The Whitechapel Conspiracy. In the latter novel, Thomas Pitt was removed as superintendent of the Bow Street police station and appointed to Special Branch. Accordingly, in line with his new more political role, Southampton Row takes place in July 1892 during the British general election, for Pitt’s enemy, Sir Charles Voisey, the head of the Inner Circle, a secretive group of men with enormous power, is standing as the Tory candidate for the seat of South Lambeth. The Liberal candidate is Aubrey Serracold, and his wife Rose becomes the linchpin of the story, as she has been visiting a medium named Maude Lamont, who has been murdered at the start of the election campaign and Rose together with two others, were the last to see the medium alive. Pitt is required to investigate whether Rose was the murderer, one of the other two, or was Voisey connected to this murder for political advantage.

Anne Perry has been faulted as having written to a formula, with Thomas Pitt covering the police/crime element of a story and his wife Charlotte, providing an entrance to Victorian “society”. In some of the novels in this series such as Half Moon Street, the formula does not work. However, in Southampton Row, Anne Perry in 2002 was at the top of her form, with Lady Emily Radley substituting for her in hiding sister, Charlotte Pitt and Thomas Pitt exercising his renowned investigation skills, within the new world of Special Branch.

The novel is recommended.

Reviewed by Stuart McMartin
SMSA Member