Cain His Brother. - book reviews

National Review, May 6, 1996 by Anthony LeJeune

"AN incredible three million copies of her books have been sold in America," boast Anne Perry's British publishers. Incredible, no; if they say so, I believe them. A bit puzzling, yes; the reason for such popularity is not altogether clear. But the op- erative word in that boast is "America." Although Miss Perry is a British writer, living in Britain, her books are much less well known on the eastern side of the Atlantic. And that's not puzzling at all.

Her novels, set in Victorian London, are -- like those of Martha Grimes, an American mystery writer who has set nearly all her books in Britain -- full of slight solecisms and anomalies liable to set sensitive English teeth on edge. They have been praised by the upmarket American press for their historical authenticity and atmospheric plausibility but authentic and plausible, to anyone with the slightest knowledge of the period, they are certainly not.

Miss Perry's books fall into two, scarcely distinguishable, series, both featuring police detectives who pursue their investigations through foggy streets to the clip-clop of hansom cabs, from the drawing rooms of Mayfair to the stews of Limehouse. In the latest, Cain His Brother, ex-Inspector Monk (now an "Agent of Inquiry," long before Sherlock Holmes claimed to be the only "consulting detective" in the world) searches for a missing man in the fever-ridden slums of the East End. His quarry, a saintly character, had an evil twin brother, who may have murdered him: but there is no body, and the villain is quite confident that none will be found. A trial ensues nevertheless, with a melodramatic denouement.

The mood is gloomy throughout, and, squalor being squalor, well-founded in sociologically inclined history books. So far, so plausible -- until the narrative moves into the more socially complex regions of the Bar and the professional classes, where it suddenly becomes apparent that the author does not know what she's talking about. London barristers don't have "offices" in a street near Lincoln's Inn Fields: they had, and have, chambers in one of the Inns of Court. They don't "approach the witness stand" like Perry Mason. Nor are English clergymen called "Reverend Wyndham" -- or, at least, they weren't before Hollywood's influence.

In all Miss Perry's books, modern prejudices, particularly about class and the position of women, are constantly insinuated and heavily emphasized. Victorians, however radical, simply didn't think in those terms. Gentlemen, she tells us, "only dabbled, they did not actually work"; which would have astonished some very energetic Victorian gentlemen. As for women, they were "the weaker vessel, expected to weep, to lean on others"; which would have amazed many tough-minded Victorian ladies. On the other hand, no respectable Victorian man would ever have said "what the hell" in the presence of a lady. Still less would a respectable woman have used such language herself ("bloody incompetent generals").

The most recent book in Miss Perry's other series, Traitors Gate (why no apostrophe?), set in higher social circles, was even more liable to such solecisms. In it Superintendent Pitt, aided by his wife, Charlotte, investigates a murder in a gentlemen's club. The crime involves Important People: it touches on the colonial struggle for Africa and a sinister anti-democratic conspiracy, the Inner Circle.

Miss Perry has conscientiously studied the background details. She knows London's street plan, what songs were sung in the music halls, what fashions the ladies wore: and she makes sure we know she knows. The effect is spoiled by things in some ways less obscure but perhaps not quite so readily swotted up. The club she writes about, crucial to the story, has a "manager" and "stewards," like an American club, not a "secretary" and "waiters"; it has a "foyer" and a quite impossible inner room for senior members only. The club's domestic arrangements are important because they affect the solution, described as "very clever and very efficient" but in fact absurd.

Even that sort of thing might not matter if the Victorian feel were right. There are some other curious Americanisms -- "As close to Westminster as we live" (no Englishman, now or then, would insert the first "as"), "French doors" instead of "French windows," and (admittedly not often) some hilariously dreadful dialogue --"Must be damned urgent to seek a fellow out at his club, what?" When a high flyer at the Colonial Office is described as academically outstanding because he graduated from Cambridge at age 23, one can only ask what took him so long. Again we have the word "bloody" used in the presence of, indeed addressed to, a lady.

Has Miss Perry never seen Pygmalion? Has she never read Victorian novels -- Trollope, Wilkie Collins, The Dolly Dialogues, The Four Feathers, or even the Sherlock Holmes stories? Or another, equally famous, Victorian tale which had better not be named for fear of giving away the twist at the end of Cain His Brother? The surprising answer is "Possibly not."