Popular Culture Review Vol. 11, No. 1, February 2000 | Page 105
The Case of Anne Perry
97
6. Leaker and Taddeo note that “it was the war that gave Hester her independence—from
home, marriage, and the boredom and restrictions of womanhood that she so deplores”
( 100).
7. Hester’s “masculine” logic partakes, of course, of the classic detective’s strongest attribute,
exemplified in Poe’s Auguste Dupin and Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes.
8. The risk inherent in Hester’s class and professional ambiguity is a dominant theme of
Sins o f the Wolf
9. Though they focus largely on the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series, Leaker and Taddeo
smartly analyze the ways in which Perry’s Hester often reinforces the very Victorian
notions of imperialism, femininity, and bourgeois “family values” that she might seem
to challenge. Perry’s construction of Hester as a Crimean heroine possessing essentialized
femininity and class-bound “character,” for example, does indeed support this
interpretation.
Works Cited
Abel-Smith, Brian. A History o f the Nursing Profession. 1960. London: Heinemann, 1970.
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. “A Scandal in Bohemia.” 1892. The Complete Sherlock Holmes v.
I. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1930. 161-175.
Leaker, Cathy and Julie Anne Taddeo. “Defend and Preserve: Imminent Nostalgia in the
Victorian Mysteries of Anne Perry.” Clues: A Journal o f Detection 17.1 (1996): 77106.
Perry, Anne. Cain His Brother. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1995.
—. A Dangerous Mourning. New York: Ivy Books, 1991.
—. Defend and Betray. New York: Ivy Books, 1992.
—. The Face o f a Stranger. New York: Ivy Books, 1990.
—. Sins o f the Wolf. London: Headline, 1994.
—. A Sudden, Fearful Death. New York: Ivy Books, 1993.
—. Weighed in the Balance. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1996.
Rich, B. Ruby. “The Lady Dicks: Genre Benders Take the Case.” The Village Voice Literary
Supplement (June 1989): 24.