Slaves of Obsession, Anne Perry
Slaves of Obsession, Anne Perry
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Slaves of Obsession

Author: Anne Perry

Narrator: Simon Jones

Abridged: 4 hr 53 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/03/2000


Synopsis

The year is 1861. The American Civil War has just begun, and London arms dealer Daniel Alberton is becoming a very wealthy man. His quiet dinner party seems remote indeed from the passions rending America. Yet investigator William Monk and his bride, Hester, sense growing tensions and barely concealed violence. For two of the guests are Americans, each vying to buy Alberton’s armaments. Soon Monk and Hester’s forebodings are fulfilled as one member of the party is brutally murdered and two others disappear– along with Alberton’s entire inventory of weapons. As Monk and Hester track the man they believe to be the murderer all the way to Washington, D.C., and the bloody battlefield at Manassas, Slaves of Obsession twists and turns like a powder-keg fuse and holds the reader breathless and spellbound. . . .

About Anne Perry

Sometimes the personal story of a particular author seems almost as intriguing as the books they write. Such is the life of British author Anne Perry (aka Juliet Marion Hulme). As a child Hulme was very ill with tuberculosis and ended up being fostered out by a family in the Caribbean. She did get better, and the family moved to a private island in New Zealand, where she describes her life as a Swiss family Robinson type existence. She became ill again and during her bouts of illness through her teen years, she missed most of her childhood education. However, her mother had prepared her by teaching her how to read and write by the time she was four. Her heart always seemed to be in writing.

At the age of 15, Juliet and her best friend plotted and killed her friend's mother. The three went for a walk in the park and Hulme dropped a stone, causing the mother to bend over to pick it up, and her friend hit her own mother on the head with a half brick. They had planned on the strike killing her, but they had to strike her 20 times before she was dead. The girls were put on trial and each served five years in prison. It is said that they never saw each other again after being released. For many years, nobody connected author Anne Perry as the teen murderer, Juliet Hulme. In 1994, the film Heavenly Creatures, portrayed Hulme and her friend Pauline Parker with characters being played by Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey respectively.

Perry's genre of writing covers Victorian Era Detective fiction for the most part. Her novels have been centered around two main characters, Thomas Pitt and William Monk. She has published 47 novels and several collections of stories.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Lewis on November 26, 2015

AN EXCELLENT STORY WITH A DISAPPOINTING ENDING I am a great fan of Anne Perry's Monk series. This book has all of the elements which I find attractive in her writing - the Victorian settings, the intelligent interchange between Monk and Hester, an interesting mystery to solve, a well-played trial. Ho......more

Goodreads review by Rodrigo on July 25, 2022

Es el primer libro que leo de esta autora y me ha decepcionado. El ritmo de la obra es bastante lento, yo me esperaba algo parecido a las obras de A. Christie, pero ni punto de comparación. Lo único interesante cuando describen un poco la batalla del run Bull de la guerra de secesión en América. El......more

Goodreads review by Johnny on May 22, 2012

Slaves of Obsession is a frustrating book. Clearly a murder mystery (as are all in this series), the murderer proves to be the most likely suspect for me but not the villain I wanted it to be. To be sure, there is a certain poetic justice which occurs with regard to the one I consider a villain, but......more

Goodreads review by Jane on January 18, 2014

Back and forth I went, changing my rating from 2 stars to 3. In the end Perry's writing style made up for the ridiculous plot. Well, almost. I felt like throwing the book across the room when Monk, in the middle of the Battle of Bull Run, finds the very man he is looking for amidst 40,000 or more fi......more


Quotes

“WHEN IT COMES TO THE VICTORIAN MURDER MYSTERY, NO ONE CAN TOP PERRY. . . . THIS IS ONE OF HER BEST.”
San Francisco Examiner


“LUXURIANT . . . IT’S E. M. FORSTER SPLICED WITH THOMAS HARRIS. . . . PERRY IS A MASTER.”
The Baltimore Sun


“SCENES ARE BRILLIANTLY ETCHED . . . [Perry is] the most adroit sleight-of-hand practitioner since Agatha Christie.”
Chicago Sun Times