The Face of a Stranger (William Monk #1) by Anne Perry

The Face of a Stranger by Anne Perry is the first in her very successful 24-book series William Monk. It's set in Victorian London and police detective William Monk is involved in a carriage accident that leaves him without a memory of who he is. He's assigned to the murder of Joscelin Grey, a Crimean war hero when he gets out of the hospital. We learn more and more about Monk as he tries to unravel what happened to Grey, as well as what happened to him the night of his accident. 

Look, this book is a snooze. I had it for the entire 21-days of my Libby loan because I'd read three paragraphs and fall asleep. It was GREAT as a soporific and if you're having trouble sleeping, might I recommend this book to you?  It was only 345 pages long, but if you had asked me, I would have said it was around 700, so it was that sort of thing. 

I read this book, though, because one of the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge prompts this year is a book written by an incarcerated or formerly incarcerated person and have any of you heard of Anne Perry? She was a super successful author, who wrote the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series of books, as well as this William Monk series of historical detective fiction.

BUT! When she was sixteen, she helped murder the mother of her best friend in New Zealand. After serving five years for murder, she was released and moved back to the UK where she was originally from and changed her name. It was not widely known that Anne Perry was Juliet Hume the murderer until a 1994 movie came out about the murder. She continued to be a successful author of (imo really boring) murder mysteries. 

What a story. 

2/5 stars

Lines of note:

...he knew nothing. It was a total and paralyzing disadvantage. He did not even know who loved or hated him, whom he had wronged, or helped. (page 6) 

It's kind of crazy to think about what it would be like if you woke up one day and literally had no memory of who you were, what you looked like, or anything. I can't really engage in this type of hypothetical thinking.

It is one of the finest things in life to be truly useful...(page 174)

I feel this deeply in my soul.

...he had ever known the purpose of the war in the Crimea he had forgotten it now. (page 201)

In light of what's going on in Ukraine right now, this seems very on the nose. 

“Sorrows do not wait for one another.” (page 218)

When it rains, it pours, right?

Stuff I looked up:

Monk settled himself into a vacant seat opposite a large woman in black bombazine with a fur tippet around her neck (in spite of the season) and a black hat on at a fierce angle. (page 73) - Bombazine is a type of fabric and a tippet is a piece of clothing worn over the shoulders in the shape of a scarf or cape. 

plain stuff dress (page 80) - In Victorian dressmaking terminology, stuff was used as a generic term for woven fabrics, with cloth generally reserved for woollens (as opposed to worsteds).

redan (page 147) - an arrow-shaped embankment forming part of a fortification

Hat mentions:

He was a big man, or he appeared so in the caped coat and top hat of Peel’s Metropolitan Police Force. (page 5)

Runcorn had left for him his Peeler’s coat and tall hat, carefully dusted off and mended after the accident.

The cabby hesitated, then took one of the sixpences and the halfpenny, tipped his hat and slapped the reins across his horse’s rump, leaving Monk standing on the pavement. (page 10)

“Usual things you might expect to see, stand for coats and things, and hats, rather a nice stand for sticks, umbrellas and so forth, box for boots, a small table for calling cards, nothing else." (page 34)

"A natural night for anyone to ’ave ’is coat turned up an’ ’is ’at drawn down." (page 55)

"Same coat, and ’at, same size, same ’eight. Weren’t no one else like that lives ’ere.” (page 55) 

Runcorn turned from the hat stand and smiled fully at him, his eyes bright. (page 119)

Would hats be larger or smaller? (page 149)

Rosamond spoke with the eldest girl, and took the wide pink ribbon off her own hat and gave it to her, tying it around the child’s hair to her shy delight. (page 175)

...but Monk was outside and going down the stairs for his hat and coat. (page 287)

...in a swirl of agitation, swinging her skirts around as she swept into the hallway and deposited a basket full of linen on the settle at the bottom of the stairs and took off her hat. (page 291)