Home / Authors / Anne Perry

Author

Anne Perry

72 fiction

Anne Perry (1938–2023), born Juliet Hulme, was a British author best known for historical crime fiction set in Victorian England. Her first major series follows police inspector Thomas Pitt and his socially well-connected wife Charlotte as they investigate murders involving London’s aristocracy, political institutions and poorer districts. Beginning with The Cater Street Hangman, the series combines conventional detective plots with examinations of class, gender, poverty and social hypocrisy. Perry later created the darker William Monk series, beginning with The Face of a Stranger, featuring an amnesiac investigator and Crimean War nurse Hester Latterly.

Most of Perry’s fiction is historical. In addition to the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt, William Monk and Daniel Pitt mysteries, she wrote five interconnected novels about a British family during the First World War, beginning with No Graves as Yet. Her Elena Standish series is set amid the political tensions of 1930s Europe, while The Sheen on the Silk moves much further back in time to the Byzantine Empire. Perry also produced a long sequence of Christmas historical mysteries, usually centred on secondary characters from her principal Victorian series. Her novels are particularly notable for using criminal investigations to explore moral responsibility, institutional injustice and the restrictions placed upon women in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century society.

Periods and events

Victorian London Rise of Fascism Pre-war London, 1910–1914 Rise of Nazism Battle of the Somme British Home Front during World War I Western Front July Crisis Armistice and Aftermath of World War I

Historical fiction

Historical fiction series by Anne Perry (5 series)

William Monk in Order

by Anne Perry 23 books 4.4

The William Monk series follows a Victorian investigator who awakens after an accident without memory of his identity or previous conduct. Assisted by Crimean War nurse Hester Latterly and barrister Oliver Rathbone, Monk reconstructs his past while solving cases that expose violence within wealthy households, hospitals, courts, docks…

The Face of a Stranger

4.3

A Dangerous Mourning

4.3

Defend and Betray

4.5

A Sudden, Fearful Death

4.4

The Sins of the Wolf

4.4

Cain His Brother

4.5

Weighed in the Balance

4.1

The Silent Cry

4.5

Whited Sepulchres

4.5

The Twisted Root

4.4

Slaves of Obsession

4.4

Funeral in Blue

4.4

Death of a Stranger

4.5

The Shifting Tide

4.6

Dark Assassin

Acceptable Loss

4.5

A Sunless Sea

4.5

Blind Justice

4.4

Blood on the Water

4.4

Corridors of the Night

4.2

Revenge in a Cold River

4.4

An Echo of Murder

4.4

Dark Tide Rising

4.6

Elena Standish in Order

by Anne Perry 5 books 4.4

The Elena Standish series follows a British photographer recruited into intelligence work as fascism and Nazism spread across Europe in the 1930s. Elena’s assignments take her through Italy, Germany, Austria, the United States and the English country-house world, where photographs, diplomatic contacts and family relationships become sources of…

Death in Focus

4.4

A Question of Betrayal

4.4

A Darker Reality

4.3

A Truth to Lie For

4.4

The Traitor Among Us

4.6

Daniel Pitt Mystery in Order

by Anne Perry 7 books 4.5

The Daniel Pitt mysteries follow the barrister son of Charlotte and Thomas Pitt as he begins practice in London between 1910 and 1913. Working with fellow lawyer Toby Kitteridge and forensic scientist Miriam fford Croft, Daniel defends clients facing the gallows and investigates evidence that reaches beyond the…

Twenty-One Days

4.4

Triple Jeopardy

4.5

One Fatal Flaw

4.5

Death with a Double Edge

4.4

Three Debts Paid

4.4

The Fourth Enemy

4.5

Death Times Seven

4.6

The Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novels in Order

by Anne Perry 32 books 4.3

The Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novels begin in 1881, when Inspector Thomas Pitt investigates murders in the respectable Cater Street household of Charlotte Ellison. Their marriage develops alongside thirty-two cases that lead Pitt from ordinary police work into Special Branch and bring Charlotte’s knowledge of upper-class society into…

The Cater Street Hangman

4.3

Callander Square

4.3

Paragon Walk

4.2

Resurrection Row

4.3

Rutland Place

4.3

Bluegate Fields

4.3

Death in the Devil’s Acre

4.4

Cardington Crescent

4.4

Silence in Hanover Close

4.4

Bethlehem Road

4.3

Highgate Rise

4.2

Belgrave Square

4.4

Farriers’ Lane

4.3

The Hyde Park Headsman

4.4

Traitors Gate

4.4

Pentecost Alley

4.3

Ashworth Hall

4.2

Brunswick Gardens

4.2

Bedford Square

4.2

Half Moon Street

4.4

The Whitechapel Conspiracy

4.4

Southampton Row

4.5

Seven Dials

4.5

Long Spoon Lane

4.5

Buckingham Palace Gardens

4.4

Betrayal at Lisson Grove

4.4

Dorchester Terrace

4.4

Midnight at Marble Arch

4.4

Death on Blackheath

4.4

The Angel Court Affair

4.1

Treachery at Lancaster Gate

4.4

Murder on the Serpentine

4.5

World War I in Order

by Anne Perry 5 books

Anne Perry’s World War I sequence follows the Reavley family from the summer of 1914 to the armistice of 1918. Joseph serves as an army chaplain on the Western Front, Judith becomes an ambulance driver, Matthew works in British intelligence and Hannah experiences the war through naval service…