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Home / Series / The Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novels

Series

The Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novels

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 investigations that official authority cannot easily penetrate.

Set across late-Victorian London, the sequence examines domestic violence, prostitution, religious conflict, imperial politics, anarchism and corruption. Its mysteries repeatedly contrast public respectability with concealed abuse, while Pitt’s career expands from neighbourhood murders to conspiracies involving ministers, Buckingham Palace and Queen Victoria.

Reading order

Books in this series (32 books)

The Cater Street Hangman cover

#1 – The Cater Street Hangman

Anne Perry

A killer is strangling young women in Cater Street, leaving their swollen-faced bodies in the dark shadows of this genteel neighbourhood. When the Ellison family's maid becomes the murderer's third victim, young Inspector Thomas Pitt is assigned to the case. He must break through the walls…

Callander Square cover

#2 – Callander Square

Anne Perry

When the bodies of two infants are dug up in the Callander Square gardens, the upper-class residents resent the intrusion of Inspector Thomas Pitt into their well-ordered lives. They dismiss it as the desperate act of some low-born girl, but Pitt is not convinced that the…

Paragon Walk cover

#3 – Paragon Walk

Anne Perry

When young Fanny Nash dies in the arms of her sister-in-law, Jessamyn, Inspector Pitt is assigned to investigate her rape and murder. Every man of Paragon Walk is under suspicion, even Pitt's brother-in-law, Lord George Ashworth, who was the last to have seen her. Could the…

Resurrection Row cover

#4 – Resurrection Row

Anne Perry

Lord Fitzroy-Hammond of Resurrection Row has been dead and buried three weeks when he turns up sitting atop a hansom cab. Grave robbing, though a crime, isn't Inspector Thomas Pitt's usual work. But when the macabre joke is repeated, and the man's corpse is found sitting…

Rutland Place cover

#5 – Rutland Place

Anne Perry

Charlotte Pitt's mother has lost a locket holding a compromising picture. Arriving at her mother's home at Rutland Place to help her search, Charlotte discovers that other residents of the exclusive neighbourhood have suffered similar unexplained small thefts. Then Mina Spencer-Brown, a woman known for prying,…

Bluegate Fields cover

#6 – Bluegate Fields

Anne Perry

The naked body of an aristocratic youth turns up in the sewers beneath Bluegate Fields, one of London's most notorious slums. But Arthur Waybourne had been drowned in his bath, not in the Thames. More shocking still is the discovery that the boy had been violated…

Cardington Crescent cover

#8 – Cardington Crescent

Anne Perry

As Inspector Thomas Pitt works to resolve the case of a dismembered woman, his brother-in-law, George March, Lord Ashworth, is poisoned. The police's main suspect: Charlotte's sister, Emily. Convinced of her innocence, Charlotte and Pitt take on the March clan with the help of her formidable…

Bethlehem Road cover

#10 – Bethlehem Road

Anne Perry

In the few minutes it takes to cross Westminster Bridge, Sir Lockwood Hamilton has his throat slit and is tied to a lamppost with his evening scarf. The killer vanishes without being seen. Inspector Thomas Pitt thinks the motive might have been personal... or political. When…

Highgate Rise cover

#11 – Highgate Rise

Anne Perry

Clemency Shaw, the wife of a prominent doctor, is killed in a tragic fire in Highgate. But the blaze was deliberate, so was she or her husband the intended victim? Could the doctor have set it himself to inherit Clemency's large fortune? While Inspector Thomas Pitt…

Belgrave Square cover

#12 – Belgrave Square

Anne Perry

The murder in Clerkenwell of an obscure moneylender named William Weems brings discreet rejoicing among those whose meagre earnings he so mercilessly devoured. Yet when Inspector Thomas Pitt finds a list including some of London's most distinguished gentlemen in Weems' office, he begins to realize this…

Farriers’ Lane cover

#13 – Farriers’ Lane

Anne Perry

The distinguished Justice Stafford's shocking death from opium poisoning resurrects one of the most sensational cases ever to inflame England: the murder five years before of Kingsley Blaine, whose body was found crucified in Farriers' Lane. Amid the public hysteria for revenge, the police had arrested…

Traitors Gate cover

#15 – Traitors Gate

Anne Perry

Someone in the Colonial Office is passing secrets to Germany about England's strategy on Africa. While Police Superintendent Thomas Pitt investigates this matter of treason, he is quietly looking into the tragic death of his childhood mentor, Sir Arthur Desmond. Pitt believes that Sir Arthur was…

Pentecost Alley cover

#16 – Pentecost Alley

Anne Perry

Inspector Thomas Pitt knows the murder of a prostitute in a bedroom on decrepit Pentecost Alley would normally cause little comment, but under Ada McKinley's body is a Hellfire Club badge inscribed with the name 'Finlay Fitzjames'. Finlay's father - immensely wealthy, powerful, and dangerous -…

Ashworth Hall cover

#17 – Ashworth Hall

Anne Perry

When a group of powerful Irish Protestants and Catholics gather at a country house to discuss Irish home rule, contention is to be expected. But when the meeting's moderator, government bigwig Ainsley Greville, is found murdered in his bath, negotiations seem doomed. Unless Superintendent Thomas Pitt…

Brunswick Gardens cover

#18 – Brunswick Gardens

Anne Perry

In London's affluent Brunswick Gardens, the battle over Charles Darwin's revolutionary theory of evolution intensifies as the respected Reverend Parmenter is boldly challenged by his beautiful assistant, Unity Bellwood - a 'new woman' whose feminism and aggressive Darwinism he finds appalling. When Unity, three months pregnant,…

Bedford Square cover

#19 – Bedford Square

Anne Perry

When a man is found murdered on the doorstep of a respectable house in Bedford Square, Victorian England's finest and most controversial policeman, Thomas Pitt, is called immediately to the scene. The only clue to the victim's identity is a silver snuff box found on the…

The Whitechapel Conspiracy cover

#21 – The Whitechapel Conspiracy

Anne Perry

London, 1892. Thomas Pitt’s testimony sends distinguished soldier John Adinett to the gallows for murdering a friend, but instead of receiving praise Pitt is removed from command and transferred to Whitechapel. Ordered to investigate alleged anarchist activity undercover, he enters a district still shadowed by the…

Southampton Row cover

#22 – Southampton Row

Anne Perry

A general election is approaching, and Thomas Pitt is ordered to prevent a political crisis involving Tory powerbroker Charles Voisey and Liberal candidate Aubrey Serracold. When a fashionable clairvoyant is murdered after a séance in Southampton Row, the victim’s knowledge of private conversations threatens to destabilise…

Seven Dials cover

#23 – Seven Dials

Anne Perry

A junior diplomat is found dead in a wheelbarrow in the garden of Ayesha Zakhari, an Egyptian woman whose relationship with cabinet minister Saville Ryerson has already attracted gossip. Special Branch orders Thomas Pitt to protect Ryerson’s reputation while determining whether Ayesha is a murderer or…

Long Spoon Lane cover

#24 – Long Spoon Lane

Anne Perry

Bombs explode during an anarchist attack in Long Spoon Lane, leaving suspects dead or captured and raising the possibility that someone inside the police deliberately silenced the group’s leader. Thomas Pitt is drawn into an inquiry in which public fear of terrorism can justify almost any…

Buckingham Palace Gardens cover

#25 – Buckingham Palace Gardens

Anne Perry

Thomas Pitt is summoned to Buckingham Palace after a prostitute is murdered during a private gathering of politicians and businessmen discussing an African railway project. The guests are confined inside the palace, but rank and royal protocol make ordinary interrogation almost impossible. Working with palace servants…

Betrayal at Lisson Grove cover

#26 – Betrayal at Lisson Grove

Anne Perry

A dying informant directs Thomas Pitt towards an international plot, and the assassin fleeing the scene draws him across the Channel to Saint-Malo. While Pitt follows the trail abroad, Special Branch chief Victor Narraway is accused of embezzlement and removed from office. Charlotte accompanies Narraway to…

Dorchester Terrace cover

#27 – Dorchester Terrace

Anne Perry

Former intelligence agent Serafina Montserrat believes that an old European conspiracy is active again, but age and failing memory make her warning difficult to assess. Thomas Pitt must decide whether she possesses genuine knowledge of a threat to the crown or is being manipulated by someone…

Midnight at Marble Arch cover

#28 – Midnight at Marble Arch

Anne Perry

The brutal assault and apparent suicide of Catherine Quixwood create rumours that threaten both her memory and her husband’s position in the financial world. Although the case lies outside Special Branch, Thomas Pitt begins a discreet inquiry when the official explanation fails to account for the…

Death on Blackheath cover

#29 – Death on Blackheath

Anne Perry

A maid disappears from the Blackheath home of Dudley Kynaston, a naval weapons expert whose work is important to British defence. When a mutilated body is found nearby, Thomas Pitt must determine whether the death is a domestic crime, an attempt at blackmail or part of…

The Angel Court Affair cover

#30 – The Angel Court Affair

Anne Perry

Sofia Delacruz, a controversial Spanish religious leader, arrives in London preaching reform and reconciliation. When she vanishes from Angel Court and members of her circle are attacked, Thomas Pitt is ordered to find her before the disappearance becomes an international and sectarian crisis. Pitt and Charlotte…

Treachery at Lancaster Gate cover

#31 – Treachery at Lancaster Gate

Anne Perry

A bomb destroys a police station near Lancaster Gate and kills officers who appear to have been selected deliberately. Thomas Pitt’s investigation meets resistance from within the Metropolitan Police, suggesting that the attack may be connected to corruption rather than indiscriminate political violence. As Pitt and…