Cain His Brother

"Give her a good murder and a shameful social evil, and Anne Perry can write a Victorian mystery that would make Dickens's eyes pop."--The New York Times Book ReviewVictoria's London was the queen of the universe, a dazzling metropolis from whose magnificent mansions and discreetly luxurious clubs flowed the strategies that built the greatest empire ever known. Meanwhile the city's poor suffered and died in hopeless obscurity. Inspector William Monk knows his city's best and its worst--or so he believes until the day when charming Genevieve Stonefield comes to plead with him to find her missing husband.In his family life, Angus Stonefield had been gentle and loving; in business, a man of probity; and in his relationship with his twin brother, Caleb, a virtual saint. Now he is missing, and it appears more than possible that Caleb--a creature long since abandoned to depravity--has murdered him.And so Monk puts himself into the missing man's shoes, searching in Stonefield's comfortable home, his prospering business, his favorite haunts, and, finally, the city's dangerous, fever-ridden slums for clues to Angus's fate and his vicious brother's whereabouts. Slowly, Monk inches toward the truth--and also, unwittingly, toward the destruction of his good name and livelihood....Cain His Brother builds from one astonishment to another until, in a transfixed courtroom, fate, or perhaps the devil, plays with men's lives and laughs a last mad laugh. Never before has Anne Perry penetrated so deeply into the darkness of the human heart and into a past that rises up to haunt us with its tragic ironies.A MAIN SELECTION OF THE MYSTERY GUILDAN ALTERNATE SELECTION OF THE LITERARY GUILD AND DOUBLEDAY BOOK CLUBS