A Dangerous Mourning by Anne Perry

Monk number two was certainly an improvement on number one, but it didn't have a high bar to jump.  

We are back in aristocratic Victorian England to solve the mystery of a young woman found dead in her bedroom with the only suspects living in the house.  Nothing but class politics and home bound intrigue here.  Exciting (image my sarcastic eye rolling).

While I love Victorian England because of the many moral debates that can arise from it, this go around it was too on the nose.  The whole novel is servants versus gentry, man versus woman.  Sigh.

Also, the author still lingered on Monk's amnesia for too many pages.  It is frustrating to slog through so many unnecessary paragraphs.  I can't figure out if it is the author's attempt at burying the clues or just some really poor editing decisions to make this book 368 pages.  I feel this could have been a 200 page book easily.

The mystery was marginally better hidden this time.  While I knew the cause of death by the halfway point, I wasn't able to pin down all the players and motives involved until the 3/4 point.  A Dangerous Mourning managed to get itself one whole extra star in rating for being mildly more entertaining and taking longer to solve than The Face of a Stranger.

I'm going to try Defend and Betray next because the writing does seem to be improving considerably, and the moral discussion possibilities are strong for a mystery series.