SOURCE: "Strangled by Gaslight," in New York Times Book Review, October 17, 1993, p. 47.

In the following review, Boyle attributes many of the problems of Perry's A Sudden, Fearful Death, to its unfocused protagonist William Monk.

Anne Perry has published more than a dozen crime novels set in Victorian England. Her labors have brought her a wide readership and a certain beyond-the-genre literary distinction. A Sudden, Fearful Death is the fourth in a series whose nominal hero is William Monk, a police officer who left the London force under an unspecified cloud to set up shop as one of the first private detectives. He is subsidized by Lady Callandra Daviot, an unkempt widow of means and good intentions, whose only requirement is that Monk disclose to her some of the details of his adventures in the demimonde.

In the early pages of the novel, Monk is summoned to investigate the...