About book The Last Pleasure Garden: Desire. Death. Corruption...The Dark Heart Of Victorian London... (2006)
'The Last Pleasure Garden' of the book's title is Cremorne Gardens, a Victorian version of the notorious Vauxhall Gardens of Regency infamy. All sorts of things happen in the Gardens, including a mad man who is cutting a lock from young women's hair and slashing dresses, using a frighteningly large pair of scissors. tInspector Webb has to catch the man and finds there is far more involved than a simple lunatic at large. Dead bodies, murder and baby farming, past passions and present revenge tangle together in a mix he has difficulty unravelling. For Jackson fans this will be a pleasure to read especially as the author's Victorian London is tangible.tHowever I do have a couple of quibbles. I had been looking forward to reading this book. It is the third in a series about Decimus Webb of Scotland Yard and I'd heard much praise for the series. The first book was short listed for the Ellis Peters' Historical Dagger Award, and Lee Jackson knows his Victorian London well enough to have written an excellent non-fiction book about it. But this book (and I believe the other two also) is written in the present tense by an omniscient author. Readers are never close enough to a character to form that reader's bond which makes me willing to turn the pages and see what happens next. It makes, for me, a rather passionless book which, as the plot revolves around revenge and rekindling old passions, I found difficult reading. And I personally found it hard to accept that Rose Perfitt, a seventeen year old, gentleman's, well brought up daughter about to make her 'come out' would have so much unsupervised freedom.
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