Anne Perry’s The Angel Court Affair is rather thin soup even for this prolific “cosy” period mystery author. It is billed as a Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novel, but Charlotte and all of the other female characters (from the Pitt’s daughter to the crusty Lady Vespasia) are sadly left to populate the background, Mr. Pitt, quite frankly, is far less interesting and more plodding. He is initially asked to organize a protective detail for Sophia Delacruz, a British subject, who has married a Spanish nobleman. Sophia is a strident female evangelist, who has raised hackles among traditional Christians in a series of London speeches. When she disappears and two of her associates are violently murdered, Pitt finds the Special Branch behind the eight ball and involved in international political disruptions and long dormant academic and financial chicanery rather than evangelism. There are as usual some surprise turns at the end, but not much to convince anyone that the revealed buried motives are not stretched pretty thin. Other than people going to gentleman’s clubs and riding in carriages, the period Victorian atmosphere is also rather minimal. I give it a weak 2.5 and will, as usual, only pick up a Perry novel when there is nothing more compelling at hand.
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