A Christmas Odyssey: A Novel
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In her beloved Christmas novels, Anne Perry brings readers both the authentic Victorian charm and the nail-biting suspense that have made her Thomas Pitt and William Monk tales bestsellers for a generation. Though rife with intrigue, these special seasonal tales beam with the blessed light of the holiday.
Ten days before Christmas, as an icy wind cuts through London, wealthy James Wentworth feels not joy but grief. His reckless son, Lucien, has been lured into a deadly world of drugs and wild passion. Wentworth’s only hope, he believes, is his ancient friend Henry Rathbone, who volunteers to search for the prodigal son. Rathbone knows nothing of the sensation-obsessed underworld where Lucien now dwells, but he buys two unexpected new companions who do: Squeaky Robinson, a reformed brothel-keeper who now works in Hester Monk’s medical clinic, and Crow, a mysterious slum doctor who turns no one away, but undeserving.
Slowly this odd trio gathers clues—about Lucien’s mad infatuation with a gorgeous woman named Sadie, and about Shadwell, the ruthless man who owns her and, like the Devil, never lets go of one of his own. Rathbone, Squeaky, and Crow even welcome into their small band a most valuable recruit: young Bessie, a teenager whose courage holds quick even in the depths of the slum. And so they set into the world on their odyssey into London’s dark streets, on a mission whose outcome they cannot start to guess.
Anne Perry’s novels are supreme masterpieces of suspense, and A Christmas Odyssey ranks with the very best. The days leading up to Christmas may prove to be fraught with challenges, but ’tis the season for comfort and joy and miracles.
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Perry takes an odd assortment of characters through the twisted alleys of London’s underworld, where class distinctions are blurred by the smoke of opium pipes and the sale of every kind of depravity known to man. When James Wentworth requests the help of his friend, Harry Rathbone, in locating his dissolute son, Lucien, from the sure self-destruction of his vices, it is but ten days until Christmas. A gentleman of some refinement, Rathbone turns to Hester Monk’s medical clinic for suggestions on how best to conduct his search. The clinic visit yields the scrappy Squeaky Robinson, a ex- brothel-keeper, and an enigmatic slum doctor, Crow. The unlikely trio descends into the London’s warren of tunnels, a cornucopia of perversions and drugs for anyone with the fee of admission.
Perry’s Victorian London shimmers with Christmas cheer in streets bedecked with sparkling lights, not more than a bleak network of alleys and tunnels where Lucien is lost among the bodies of persons who seek nothingness. Bessie, a teenager familiar with this underground maze, joins the following searching for a man who doesn’t want to be establish. They hear talk of Sadie, a gorgeous woman who sparkles with manic energy, captivating the distracted Lucien; and the Shadow Man, a dark figure who rules a kingdom of vice and addiction, who decides who will enter and who will place, who is useful and who must die. In this brutal place, Lucien is the quarry, but Rathbone, Squeaky, Crow and Bessie are the prey of a monster who feeds on the confusion of innocents.
This is certainly an unusual Christmas mystery, but one that contrasts the two worlds of London society, the fancy homes and joyful celebrations of the wealthy and the damp, hopeless streets where poverty and crime coexist and depravity thrives unchecked. Three eccentric personalities- and Bessie- make for an appealing adventure, class, experience and skill cut-rate to a common denominator, humanity. An unlikely group, joined in common goal. Luan Gaines/2010.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5