Death times seven / Anne Perry.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Two violent crimes challenge the investigative skills of young Daniel Pitt and his wife, Miriam, in the final novel of iconic mystery writer Anne Perry's beloved Daniel Pitt series.

"A towering achievement from a towering talent--superb!" --Jeffery Deaver, author of the Colter Shaw series

1913: Junior attorney Daniel Pitt must step in for his friend, fellow attorney Toby Kitteridge, whose parents have been brutally attacked. Toby's mother is dead and his father, a village vicar, is barely alive. With Toby returning to the family home in rural Ipswich, struggling with grief and disbelief, Daniel remains in London to substitute for Toby and defend Peter Ward, on trial for the sexual assault and murder of a young woman.

Daniel is convinced that Ward is innocent, yet the evidence seems to prove otherwise. Eager to assist, his pathologist wife, Miriam fford Croft, offers her forensics expertise and exposes a community of fellow pathologists who may have purposefully omitted information from their autopsy reports. Despite Miriam's involvement in the case, Daniel finds himself distracted by his desire to help Toby, who is too distraught to investigate the attack on his parents. And when the evidence points to Toby's father as the killer of Toby's mother, Daniel faces two of the greatest challenges of his young career: proving the innocence of both Peter Ward and Reverend Kitteridge. One mistake in London and a blameless man will hang. One mistake in Ipswich and Toby's father will go to prison for life.

Death Times Seven , the seventh and final novel in Anne Perry's Daniel Pitt series, was completed by Victoria Zackheim, an author and editor as well as Perry's close friend. Rich in intrigue and courtroom drama, this engrossing novel marks a fitting finale to the career of an author widely praised as the queen of historical crime fiction.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Kirkus Book Review

Barrister Daniel Pitt's seventh case, set in 1913, is regrettably the last by Perry, who died in 2023, leaving it to be completed by her friend and "personal editor" Zackheim. As usual, it opens with a bang. Learning that the parents of Toby Kitteridge, his senior colleague at fford Croft and Gibson, have been shot--his mother is dead and his father in a coma--Daniel is tasked with informing his old friend of this shocking news while he's in the middle of examining a witness at the trial of Peter Ward, who's accused of murdering Alexandra Stanton while attempting to rape her. Daniel accompanies Toby to the Suffolk village where his late mother and comatose father lived. But the week's delay Toby's judge has granted isn't enough, for over the strident objections of his sister, Alberta Walsh, who insists that invading their mother's body would be a moral outrage, Toby orders an autopsy. When Toby's wife, Dr. Miriam fford Croft, a pathologist, conducts the procedure, she makes a telltale discovery that turns out to overturn the local constabulary's presumptive verdict of murder and attempted suicide against Toby's father, Rev. Justin Kitteridge. Since Toby's not in the right place geographically or psychologically to resume his defense of Peter Ward, the job falls to the less experienced and less prepared Daniel. He bumbles the case with almost comical ineptitude before the denouement vindicates the guesses of most readers helped along by the virtual absence of alternative suspects in the murders of both Alexandra Stanton and Delia Kitteridge. Fans of the period franchise needn't worry about Perry's lurid title: Most of those deaths are set comfortably in the past, the victims never named. A vigorous defense of women's rights wrapped in a pair of unsurprising mysteries. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.