Death with a double edge / Anne Perry.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Daniel Pitt's investigation into his colleague's murder leads him through London's teeming underbelly to the suspicious dealings of one of England's most influential shipbuilding magnates in a thrilling novel from New York Times bestselling author Anne Perry.

"Timely . . . and engaging . . . another terrific mystery."-- Bookreporter

When junior barrister Daniel Pitt is summoned to the scene of a murder in the London district known as Mile End, he knows only that the victim is a senior barrister from the same firm. To Daniel's relief, it is not his close friend Toby Kitteridge, but the question remains: What was this respected colleague doing in such a rough part of the city? The firm's head, Marcus fford Croft, may know more than he admits, but fford Croft's memory is not what it used to be, and his daughter, Miriam--Daniel's sometime sidekick--isn't in the country to offer her usual help. And so Daniel and Toby must investigate on their own, lest the police uncover something that may cast a suspicious light on the firm.

Their inquiries in Mile End lead them to a local brothel and to an opium den, but also--unexpectedly--to a wealthy shipbuilder crucial to Britain's effort to build up its fleet, which may soon face the fearsome naval might of Germany. Daniel finds his path blocked by officials at every turn, his investigation so unwelcome that even his father, Special Branch head Thomas Pitt, receives a chilling warning from a powerful source. Suddenly, not just Daniel but his whole family--including his beloved mother, Charlotte--is in danger. Will Daniel's devotion to justice be the undoing of his entire life, and endanger Britain's defense at sea? As ever, the fates of family and history are inextricably intertwined in this spellbinder from Anne Perry.

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

Chapter One Daniel was worried. Toby Kitteridge was almost an hour late, which was extremely uncharacteristic of him. He was untidy, no matter how hard he tried not to be. His hair never lay flat. He found it difficult to buy a shirt whose sleeves were long enough to cover his bony wrists, and occasionally he wore odd socks without noticing it. But he was meticulous about time. He was never late. He considered it to be not only rude, but incompetent, a fatal flaw in a lawyer. Daniel looked at the office clock. It said eight minutes before ten. There were two light taps on the door. He knew who it was: Impney, the chief clerk at the legal chambers of fford Croft and Gibson. "Come in," Daniel said quickly. Impney entered and closed the door behind him. Normally his face was completely professional, polite but unreadable. However, this morning he looked decidedly grim. "What is it?" Daniel asked, his voice sharper than he meant it to be. "There is a policeman outside, Mr. Pitt, and he is asking to see you." "Me, or just someone?" Daniel asked. "You, sir, quite specifically," Impney replied. "He has one of your cards." Kitteridge. Something had happened to Kitteridge. Daniel swallowed hard and kept his voice steady. "Ask him to come in, please," he instructed. "Yes, sir." Impney withdrew and a moment later opened the door again. A young, profoundly unhappy policeman came in. "Mr. Pitt?" he asked. Daniel found his voice hoarse. "Yes?" "I'm sorry to ask you, sir, but they found this card." He fished in his pocket and produced a calling card. One glance told Daniel it was his own. "Where did you find it?" Daniel asked. The policeman shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "In the pocket of a man who is unfortunately dead, sir. At first, we thought it might be his own, but one of our officers knows you by sight and said it wasn't you." "You don't know who it is?" "No, sir. If you would come and look at him, sir? It appears that he is someone you know." Daniel stood up a trifle unsteadily. "Are you all right, sir?" the constable asked with concern. "Yes, thank you," Daniel answered. He straightened his shoulders. The young man gave a sigh of relief. He glanced at the coat rack. "It's already quite warm outside; you won't need a coat." "It's a long way," Daniel pointed out. The morgue was well over a mile from Lincoln's Inn Fields, which housed the most prestigious law chambers in England, including that of fford Croft and Gibson. "I have a taxi waiting, sir." The policeman opened the door and stepped out into the passageway. Daniel left the coat and followed him, explaining to Impney that he was going with the constable to help him in an urgent matter. He did not want to put it into words. Impney was anxious enough already. "Yes, sir, I'll inform Mr. fford Croft." Impney inclined his head slightly. "Thank you," Daniel acknowledged, and followed the constable out of the front entrance, down the few steps to the pavement, and into the waiting taxi. It was one of the new shiny black automobiles that were slowly taking over from the horse-drawn hansom cabs. It was May 1911, well into the new century, not even Edwardian anymore, now into the reign of King George V. At another time, Daniel would have enjoyed riding in the black taxi. He thoroughly approved of them. But this could have been a vegetable cart for all the pleasure it gave him. He stared out the window at the street. He did not want to talk to the constable. He was choked with fear, emotion, memories of Kitteridge, who had been in the law chambers several years longer than Daniel and knew so much more. He was excellent in court. Once he began to argue a case, all his nervous tension was mastered and he had flashes of positive brilliance. Only Daniel knew he probably had odd socks on and had been too absentminded to eat breakfast. They had solved cases together, complicated and emotional ones as well as simple legal arguments. They had shared successes and failures, long hours researching into the night. There had been one or two dangerous and tragic cases, and people he would never forget. The last thing Daniel had felt toward Kitteridge was anger because he was late. And now he felt fear. What was the final thing Daniel had said before parting? Please heaven it was not something he would regret forever, now that it was too late to take it back. They were caught in traffic, as if to illustrate his fears, stuck amidst a mix of automobiles, horse-drawn vehicles, barrows, drays, and hansom cabs. He was in a hurry, impatient to get there. And yet he had to endure crawling through the mass of engines, the shouting of insults. He fidgeted in his seat. The constable glanced at him but said nothing. He made as if to say sorry, then changed his mind. This must be one of the worst parts of this man's job: having to fetch people to identify the dead body of someone they knew, even loved. At last they were there. The cab stopped, and the constable paid the fare and led Daniel across the pavement and through the doorway of the morgue. The smell of it enveloped him immediately. The carbolic and lye caught in his nostrils and the back of his throat. He could still smell death here. It lingered long after the corpses were removed. A morgue attendant appeared from behind of the doors, closing it softly behind him. "This way, sir," the constable said, glancing at Daniel anxiously. Daniel nodded without speaking, knowing the poor man was doing his best. He looked about twenty-five, near Daniel's own age. They walked side by side and passed through a doorway at the end of the passage and into an anteroom. And then Daniel saw it. It was like a blow that knocked all the air out of his body. There was a boldly checked coat hanging up on a railing. There could not be two coats so ugly in exactly that loud, clanging check. Kitteridge had just bought it, and Daniel had been very rude, calling it an eyesore. And so it was. But he would give anything now to be able to take that back. It had been meant carelessly, teasing. Kitteridge had little sense of style and had trouble getting decent clothes that fit him. Daniel felt a pull on his arm. It was the constable, gripping him as if to hold him up in case he collapsed. Daniel wanted to shake him off, but the grip was too firm. Unprotestingly, he was led into the morgue itself. How could people work in a place like this? Everybody had once been living, somebody's child, or brother, or wife . . . ​or friend. The police surgeon smiled at him grimly. Daniel had seen the man before but couldn't remember his name. It did not matter now. "Thank you, sir," the man said gently. "Just look at his face, if you don't mind. Are you ready?" No, he was not ready. He never would be. He steadied himself. He must not give in to emotion. "Yes . . ." The surgeon pulled the sheet back. It was stained with blood in patches all the way down. Daniel forced himself to look. He knew the face, in spite of the knife slashes across the cheek and nose, and another over the neck, dark with congealed blood. It was not Kitteridge--although he was about the same height, as well as Daniel could judge of a man lying down--but Jonah Drake, one of the senior lawyers in his own chambers, one of the cleverest in court. Not a particularly likable man, but one with skills Daniel could not deny. In fact, reluctantly, he had admired him. Daniel was ashamed of himself for the wave of relief he felt that it was not Kitteridge. It was as if a physical pain had vanished, to be replaced by mere discomfort. "Sir?" The surgeon's voice broke through his thoughts. "Yes . . ." He paused as a wave of relief flooded over him. "This is not Kitteridge. It's his coat on the rail, but that's Jonah Drake, a senior partner in our chambers." "Are you sure, sir?" "Yes. Kitteridge is in his mid-thirties; Mr. Drake is sixty, at the very least. It's Mr. Drake. I don't know why he had Kitteridge's coat. He must have borrowed it . . ." His voice sounded awkward, far away. "Jonah Drake. Has he any relatives we should inform? A wife, perhaps? Or children?" Daniel tried to clear his mind of the violence and the reality of death, to think clearly. "No. No, I don't think so. I'll tell Mr. fford Croft, the head of our chambers. He'll know." Excerpted from Death with a Double Edge: A Daniel Pitt Novel by Anne Perry All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Haines's Independent Bones features PI Sarah Booth Delaney, caught up with protecting a visiting professor of Greek literature at Ole Miss whose radical feminism may have sparked murder (40,000-copy first printing). In Jonasson's latest, Una is teaching in a remote Icelandic village when she discovers dark secrets the polite if distant villages have kept hidden for generations--perhaps involving The Girl Who Died (50,000-copy first printing). A peasant girl is murdered in a northern Chinese village, and exiled inspector Lu Fei takes the case in Klingborg's Thief of Souls (75,000-copy first printing). Brought back by Lupica in 2018, PI Sunny Randall investigates the suicide of best friend Spike's 20-year old niece in Robert B. Parker's Payback. In 1910, a senior barrister is found dead in a notorious London slum, and junior barrister Daniel Pitt endangers his family by investigating in Perry's Death with a Double Edge. In Walker's The Coldest Case, applying the facial reconstruction tools used on ancient skulls to the skull of a long-dead murder victim leads Bruno, chief of police in fictional town in the Dordogne, to the activities of a Cold War-era Communist organization. With A Peculiar Combination, Louisiana librarian Weaver detours from her beloved Amory Ames books to launch a new series starring Electra "Ellie" McDonnell, who cracks safes with locksmith uncle Mick to make ends meet in World War II England and agrees to help the government when she's caught (40,000-copy first printing).

Publishers Weekly Review

Set in 1911, bestseller Perry's middling fourth mystery featuring London attorney Daniel Pitt (after 2019's One Fatal Flaw) opens with Daniel identifying a dead man in a police morgue as Jonah Drake, a colleague in his law firm. Drake's slashed corpse was found in the East End early that morning, but why was he in such a dangerous neighborhood at that time? Daniel breaks the sad news to his head of chambers, who fears the killing may have been related to Drake's work for the firm and asks Daniel to do some digging. Daniel uncovers unresolved questions concerning two homicide defendants Drake represented, including one whose father, Erasmus Faber, is the owner of Britain's biggest shipbuilding company. Daniel's policeman father warns him to tread carefully, as Faber's business is vital to a country fearful of a German naval buildup. Some melodramatic action mars the closing sections, and Daniel remains an undistinctive lead. Fans of Perry's longtime series leads, Thomas and Charlotte Pitt, Daniel's parents, will be disappointed. Agent: Donald Maass, Donald Maass Literary. (Apr.)

Booklist Review

Daniel Pitt returns for his fourth outing (after One Fatal Flaw, 2020), which also features his parents, Thomas and Charlotte Pitt, protagonists of Perry's earlier series named for them. This time the law office where Daniel is striving to make his name is rocked when a longstanding employee is murdered, with Daniel's card found in his coat. Thinking the murder may be related to a case the victim was working on, Pitt and his colleagues at the chambers get to work investigating; soon there's another murder, this time involving a client. As the deaths stack up and WWI looms, violence and intimidation get closer to home, and tension builds to a boiling point. Perry has written a cracking story, with characters, even minor ones, deftly drawn to show nuanced personalities, and with dialogue evoking the atmosphere of prewar London. Readers will be glad to see the return of Daniel's beloved Miriam and will look forward to more adventures with the affable, smart lawyer and his charming circle of friends and relatives. Recommend this to Maisie Dobbs aficionados as well as Perry fans.

Kirkus Book Review

The fatal stabbing of one of his colleagues in chambers leads Daniel Pitt on a trail of murder that stretches backward and forward in 1911 London. The good news is that the dead man the police find in disreputable Mile End isn't Daniel's friend Toby Kitteridge even though he's clad in Toby's coat. The bad news is that he's Jonah Drake, another member of fford Croft and Gibson. Naturally, Inspector Letterman wants to know which of Drake's former clients might have had reason to kill him. That's not an easy call, since Drake was clever enough to win most of his cases. So Daniel focuses on two of Drake's recent clients in high-profile cases: Lionel Peterson, an accused wife killer whose trial ended in a hung jury, and Evan Faber, fabulously wealthy shipbuilder Erasmus Faber's only son, who was pronounced not guilty of murdering his lover, Marie Wesley, a woman who was no better than she should be. Daniel can't believe Evan would have killed the lawyer who got him acquitted, and Evan's soon vindicated in a way as alarming as it is definitive: After a night of pub crawling with Daniel, he's found stabbed to death in the same Mile End neighborhood. Could the situation be any more dire? Certainly it could: Inspector Letterman could accuse Marcus fford Croft, head of chambers, of blackmailing him, and Lady Charlotte Pitt, Daniel's mother and the wife of Special Branch head Sir Thomas Pitt, could be kidnapped to stop the investigation dead in its tracks. The main mystery is sadly transparent and the red herrings halfhearted distractions. But Perry's legion of fans won't mind. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.