The White Chapel Conspiracy, Anne Perry

 The Book

Chief Inspector and head of the Bow Street Station, Thomas Pitt must give testimony that will hang a honorable man, James Adinett. Although the evidence is circumstantial and there is no obvious motive, Pitt believes Adinett is guilty of murdering his good friend Martin Fetters. When Pitt's evidence convinces a jury and holds up on appeal, The Inner Circle rears its ugly head again, and has Pitt transferred out of Bow Street and into an undercover position in the dreary Spitalfields sections of London working for Victor Narraway and Special Branch. 

By working in this lower class area, Pitt is introduced to the Jewish community, where is offer shelter and a modicum of protection. By working along side these people, Pitt gains a new respect for the hard work and sacrifices of these workers, whose hours are long and whose work is arduous. He learns the Jews are not responsible for fomenting the unrest beneath the surface, and everywhere, among all of them, native born, immigrant, Christian and Jew alike, there is deep anger at the imbalance in the world. 

Back at home, Charlotte and Gracie confront life without Pitt, and the ache of missing him while he is undercover. Charlotte decides to befriend Fetters widow Juno and Gracie turns to Sergeant Tellman to help them uncover why Fetters was killed. 

Tellman and Gracie do most of the investigating, while Charlotte and Juno do most of the reasoning. But time is running out, because there is a conspiracy and unless it is uncovered the whole of London is going to go boom. If that happens, they might just loose Pitt once and for all. 

My Thoughts

The burgeoning romance between Gracie Phipps and Samuel Tellman is a pretty little side plot. True to Anne Perry's pacing, this thing really gets going in book five. I do love the quiet little love stories she puts into these books. It is here, in the deeply personal relationships, that we see where Perry at her finest. This is where she talks about all of the little moral decisions a person makes every single day. The places where when we are tired, we choose to be influenced by someone we love and become a better person. Tellman is the one doing most of this in this book. And in fact, we see William Monk in the other series struggle with his moral center a bit more. 

There is something romantically idealistic about Perry's take on love as well. Gracie and Tellman a characters from vastly different experiences. Tellman has fallen in love with a woman who does not hold his core values. And so, he reexamines them. What happens when they hold? Does love conquer those values? What if there is nothing inherently wrong with those values? 

For Gracie, working in service, or as a maid, isn't degrading the way Tellman believes it is. He's seen too many abuses from bad employers to have any real idea that service is a good way of life. But Gracie was born into unmitigating poverty. For her, barely able to read, and in desperate need of three square meals a day, service to Charlotte Pitt was an escape to safety. See sees her occupation as noble. 

The irony Perry uses here, with the multitude of corruptions of the so called upper classes is to force us to understand that both perspectives are correct. Gracie is fortunate, as were some people who went into service during the Victorian era. But many were abused. And because of those abuses, and bold leaders, those circumstances changed. 

We also see in the plotting, Perry taking her made up secret society, The Inner Circle, and pitting them up against another, well known not so secret society, the Free Masons. And since the book is called The Whitechapel Conspiracy, we are made known that the Free Mason and The Inner Circle are both using the Ripper murders for their own ends. While the book almost endorses the Duke of Clarence Theory of the Ripper murders, it barely gives us an overview of the actual alleged conspiracy, while weaving a tale of poverty and rebellion around it. 

As a piece of escapist Ripperology, this book is pretty good fare. But if you want Ripper facts, then try something else. 

Perry had little choice but to address the Ripper murders in the Pitt novels. She does have one of the premier fictional investigators in all of London as a protagonist. It seems absurd she would omit talking about the Ripper murders all together. And yet, I had hoped like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, she would. I love that Pitt doesn't know if he solved it. Only that a journalist believes he has. And that journalist was murdered. 

Interestingly, Perry includes Walter Sickert in her novel, which is out about a year ahead of Patricia Cornwell's first book where she proposes Sickert as Jack the Ripper. And I can't help but think this is Perry, deeply steeped in her world, pre-butting Cornwell theory and giving a plausible, alternative, explanation. 

For myself, I hope I never stray to the Jack the Ripper theories so deeply as to actually profess one out loud. 

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

This book came to be from the Prospect Heights and is a first edition. Which means it probably entered their library in late February or early March of 2001. This book is in fairly good condition. It has the top part of the Due Date stickers on it, meaning Prospect Heights transitioned to a bar code model after the purchase of the book, but because the bottom part of the sticker was cut out, I have no way of guessing when that was. 

Interestingly, the inside cover of this book has a map of the Whitechapel area. 

The cover of the book says it cost $25.00. And I would say at around this time, before I was pregnant with my oldest child, I was not paying that price for hardcovers, unless I bought them as a Christmas present, but I did spend between $5-8 per paperback which in today's money would equate to $8.91-14.26 in today's money. And as I am just now beginning to have disposable income, I would say, $15.00 is about what I expect to spend on my author friends' paperbacks. 

This Book                                                                        $25

Items Reviewed this Year                                           $62.99

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