Three Debts Paid

November 1, 2021

A serial killer called the Rainy Day Slasher is raining terror down on Edwardian London, and the policeman leading the investigation is Daniel Pitt's old university buddy Ian, who has also asked Daniel to defend a beloved professor of theirs accused of plagiarism. Assisting in the investigation as a newly minted pathologist, Daniel's friend Miriam fford Croft starts seeing uncomfortable links between the two cases that Daniel and Ian fail to acknowledge. Fifth in the most recent series from the New York Times best-selling author.

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February 21, 2022
In bestseller Perry’s subpar fifth early-20th-century mystery featuring London attorney Daniel Pitt (after 2020’s Death with a Double Edge), Daniel agrees to defend history professor Nicholas Wolford, with whom he studied at Cambridge, on an assault charge. Wolford attacked a fellow scholar who’d accused him of plagiarism, breaking the man’s nose, jaw, and teeth. Meanwhile, a killer the newspapers call the Rainy-day Slasher has claimed the lives of three people—a journalist, a charity worker, and a banker—who have no obvious connection with one another. In addition to stabbing them repeatedly, the Slasher severed one finger from their dominant hand, suggesting that he had targeted them deliberately. Daniel’s father, Sir Thomas Pitt, now the head of Special Branch, gets involved when the investigating inspector is warned off probing one of the victims. There’s zero deduction, and most readers will identify who’s responsible for the murders long before the Pitts do. Even those who derive pleasure from anticipating the solution will feel let down. Perry has done better. Agent: Donald Maass, Donald Maass Literary.

April 15, 2022
In Perry's latest Daniel Pitt mystery, the young barrister and his friends grapple with a serial killer terrorizing London. It's a cold, wet February in 1912 London, and the forecast calls for murder. A thorny assault case has landed on Daniel's desk, and the second casualty of the so-called Rainy-day Slasher is now in the morgue being examined by Daniel's friend Dr. Miriam fford Croft, a newly minted pathologist. Lena Madden, the second victim, like the first, Sandrine Bernard, was in her 20s. Like Sandrine, Lena was viciously stabbed, and part of her index finger on her dominant hand was severed. Soon, a third body, that of middle-aged banker Roger Haviland, is found, similarly mutilated. All the crimes occurred during blinding rain, in late afternoon or evening darkness. The police, spearheaded by Daniel's fellow Cambridge alum Inspector Ian Frobisher, focus their investigation on what, if anything, connected the three in life. Much prevarication ensues as Frobisher and his ad hoc team of Miriam; her boss, Dr. Evelyn Hall; and Daniel mull over whether or not the murders could have been random, committed by more than one person, copycat crimes, etc. The only commonality that emerges, in an information deficit seemingly intended to enhance suspense, is that each victim had been, at one time or another, a Cambridge student. Two were acquainted with suburban vicar Richard Rhodes and his wife, Polly, who also have Cambridge ties. An apparent red herring is Daniel's new case defending Cambridge history professor Nicholas Wolford, who, in a scuffle over a groundless accusation of plagiarism, broke his accuser's nose and jaw. Much backstory about Miriam's and Dr. Eve's struggles to succeed in a field closed to women, and many interviews among and between the above characters, warmed by those English creature comforts of tea, shortbread, and coal fires, drain tension from the story until the hurried and minimally foreshadowed close. Appealing mainly for well-rounded characters, not plot.

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