Customer Reviews

A nice Christmas gift - By: Valerie Adolph, 13 Dec 2003
This is a much shorter book than most of those from Anne Perry; it’s a piece of light rewading for & about Christmas. The writer takes Aunt Vespasia, one the favourite characters from her Charlotte & Thomas Pitt series, & tells the story of one Christmasin her younger days. It isn’t exactly a mystery story - a young woman commits suicide & her reasons for doing that seem obvious. But Anne Perry is master of digging beneath the obvious to find the truth beneath the truth.

The result is a tale that flows from an elegant house partyin a country mansion north to the frozen snowy wastes of Scotland (and Anne Perry livesin northern Scotland so we can assume she knows whereof she speaks). It’s a pilgrimage of sorts, with Vespasia & her friend Isobel toiling through storms & snowdrifts to find the mother of the dead woman and, incidentally the truth behind the suicide.

The only thing spoiling this good story is the overly moralistic tone that Anne Perry is increasingly becoming bogged down in. Of course you want characters with deep motivation - some pure, some mistaken, some evil - & the battle between good & evil always makes for good plot structure. But Anne Perry does tend to overdo it, leaving the reader wondering if she can stand being swamped beneath so many layers of virtue & morality.