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Product Description
He is not going to die, after all, in this Victorian pesthouse called a hospital. But the accident that felled him on a London street has left him with only half a life, because his memory and his entire past have vanished. His name, they tell him, is William Monk, and he is a London police detective; the mirror reflects a face that women woud like, but he senses he has been more feared than loved.
Monk is given a particularly sensational case: the brutal murder of Major the Honourable Joscelin Grey, Crimean war hero and a popular man about town, in his rooms in fashionable Mecklenburgh Square. It's an assignment to make or break an investigator, for the exalted status of the victim puts any representative of the police in the precarious position of having to pry into a noble family's secrets.
Suggesting that his superior, the wily Runcorn, hopes he will fail, Monk returns to a world where he cannot distinguish friend from foe. Grasping desperately for any clue to his own past and to the identity of the killer, each new revelation leads Monk step by terrifying step to the answers he seeks but dreads to find.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Introduction to Inspector Monk. The amnesia angle I didn't care that much for but Perry uses it to slowly develop her hero. To a degree this works and gives her plenty of room to take him wherever she feels. Hester is also a very good character who I see by other book jackets is a regular in the Monk mysteries. She's independent, clever and mature. It's pleasing to note that there's not a flicker of romance between the two, and I wait to see how the pair work together in the next book. The murder mystery is fairly standard but as always with Perry, the social constraints of the time are evoked well. You understand how men & women behaved the way they did.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I picked this book due to the wonderful reviews Anne Perry has received on Amazon. It was very good indeed. It reminded me of The American Boy. It is very well written and deeper than most mystery novels with very interesting historical details. The plot was, however, quite drawn out. That aside, I will definitely read more of her books.
Format:Paperback
William Monk wakes up in hospital with no idea how he got there or who he is. He has no memory of his life before the accident and the face looking back at him in the mirror is that of a stranger. Soon enough it becomes clear that he is a detective in the London police force, and an exceptional one at that. Fearing he might lose his job, he hides his memory loss as he tries to solve the brutal murder of socialite Joscelyn Grey.
Trite and clunky right from the beginning, this book was a serious struggle to finish. I was hoping the ending would be clever enough to redeem its appalling quality, but sadly that was not the case - Just an advance warning in case you make it half-way through and wonder if it's worth carrying on. It's not.
The main issue is the language. I've already mentioned its triteness, which was almost unbearable. I found myself rolling my eyes at descriptions such as people's eyes blazing with anger or voices being tight with grief. Emotions such as 'an extra awareness', 'startling softness', 'a chill, nameless fear', 'a desperate, painful relief' and 'a flutter of hope' all flash across their features, and their voices often 'grate with the intensity of their emotions' or are 'thick with anger'. At one point one of them even 'raises a sarcastic eyebrow', and another one is so overcome that all she can do it sit still and 'nurse the pain within her'. A bit later someone's pride is 'seared beyond bearing' and someone else's eyes were 'devastatingly clear'. All so banal and dramatic that they turn the characters into gross caricatures.
This one-dimensional view applies to the whole book: upper-class men are all described as masculine brutes, their wives and female relatives are either trembling, delicate beauties or head-strong spinsters. All the villains are rat-like or fat with grossly exaggerated cockney dialects, and even Monk himself feels like a cartoon: very tall and strong with 'hypnotic grey eyes'.
And the murder-mystery itself is pretty thin, which I suppose is why countless pages are filled with random ramblings rather than actual content. I don't know how may times we had to read about people entering or leaving 'the withdrawing room', or how many pages are spent detailing their ruminations on how awful the Crimean war was, or Monk's quarrels with his boss. If all that stuff was cut out we'd have a 30-page novella, which would probably be a great deal better than this 400-page headache.
Trite and clunky right from the beginning, this book was a serious struggle to finish. I was hoping the ending would be clever enough to redeem its appalling quality, but sadly that was not the case - Just an advance warning in case you make it half-way through and wonder if it's worth carrying on. It's not.
The main issue is the language. I've already mentioned its triteness, which was almost unbearable. I found myself rolling my eyes at descriptions such as people's eyes blazing with anger or voices being tight with grief. Emotions such as 'an extra awareness', 'startling softness', 'a chill, nameless fear', 'a desperate, painful relief' and 'a flutter of hope' all flash across their features, and their voices often 'grate with the intensity of their emotions' or are 'thick with anger'. At one point one of them even 'raises a sarcastic eyebrow', and another one is so overcome that all she can do it sit still and 'nurse the pain within her'. A bit later someone's pride is 'seared beyond bearing' and someone else's eyes were 'devastatingly clear'. All so banal and dramatic that they turn the characters into gross caricatures.
This one-dimensional view applies to the whole book: upper-class men are all described as masculine brutes, their wives and female relatives are either trembling, delicate beauties or head-strong spinsters. All the villains are rat-like or fat with grossly exaggerated cockney dialects, and even Monk himself feels like a cartoon: very tall and strong with 'hypnotic grey eyes'.
And the murder-mystery itself is pretty thin, which I suppose is why countless pages are filled with random ramblings rather than actual content. I don't know how may times we had to read about people entering or leaving 'the withdrawing room', or how many pages are spent detailing their ruminations on how awful the Crimean war was, or Monk's quarrels with his boss. If all that stuff was cut out we'd have a 30-page novella, which would probably be a great deal better than this 400-page headache.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
It's Worth Getting to Know WIlliam Monk Better
"Face of a Stranger," a British mystery, is first in the series of historical novels about William Monk, a British Victorian-era policeman stationed in London, then, thanks to air... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Stephanie DePue
BookFace of a Stranger
Delivery prompt and fair price but I did not think the condition was as good as described but it was acceptable.
Published on 20 May 2010 by J. E. Sheridan
A satisfying series, I always want more...
"The Face of a Stranger" introduces the reader to William Monk and Hester Latterly, in a series of books set in the mid-1800s. Read more
Published on 15 Feb 2009 by Alder
The beginning of an addiction
This book was my first meeting with Anne Perry and it was a fine meeting. I could not stop reading the story till the word End. Read more
Published on 5 Oct 2000
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