Execution Dock is Perry's most recent chapter in the Chronicles of William Monk, Victorian Detective, and it is a Duesie! Monk has succeeded his friend Durban, a man whom he admired as a good leader and a good man, as head of the River Police patrolling the Thames and the surrounding docklands of London in the mid-1800's. His predecessor had wanted very much to capture and bring to trial the man called Jericho Phillips, a purveyor of pornography starring young boys he'd picked up around the area. Sometimes, there was evidence that his crimes extended beyond the corruption of the boys: sometimes he tortured and killed them, as was evidenced upon the corpse of Walter Figgis, found floating in the river. As the book opens, Monk and his men are pursuing Phillips over the tops of lighters and barges, capturing him just in the nick of time. He will be sent up for trial and they can rest on their laurels -- a job well done.

But it all goes awry in the courts. Monk is made to look a fool, with a slipshod and less-than-useless force following him. The policies, ethics, morals, and methods of his predecessor are called into question. Even Mrs. Monk, a former Crimean War nurse who runs a clinic for women and children of the streets, and who had testified, with her medical knowledge, at the trial, was made into an over-emotional and hysterical woman who could have no understanding of the case. What's more, the person whose legal expertise allows Phillips to be freed, is a well-thought-of barrister friend of both of the Monks.

Soon things become very knotted, as it becomes clear that the backing of the poronography ring has very deep and high-born pockets. There is a fabric of lies, deception, rumors, and untruths, which threaten to tie the hands of the police, the law, and all well-meaning souls. It is only by trickery, and the use of classes of people mostly ignored by society, that the Right prevails, and that is only after a considerable number of scary events. Just the fear of getting lost in the docklands is painted as a frightening picture in this dark Victorian world, where women and children are treated as less than human and law is easily corrupted.

Perry has always written brilliantly, but the fear in this novel is as palpable as the smells of rotting wood, human excrement, and boiled cabbage, and the web of intrigue has virtually no holes. A tour de force and rapid page-turner, you can be sure. Very highly recommended!

Book Recommendations from Librarian Jill!

Non-Fiction
Blink: The Power Of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell (who also wrote The Tipping Point).

How we make instant decisions, how we “think” without conscious thinking, about instant “choices” that are not as simple as they seem. Why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others? Explains “thin slicing”- analyzing on very few but excellent variables, and how introducing more thought and variables can muddy up the decision-making and lead to bad choices- and when our “blink” capacity fails us.
“… great decision makers aren’t those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of “thin-slicing”-filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables.” 
“Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience and psychology,…Blink changes the way you understand every decision you make. Never again will you think about thinking the same way.”

It also shows we are influenced a lot by what is said to us and what is around us, without our realizing it.

General Fiction

Echo Maker: A Novel by Richard Powers

Explores what makes up our identity and how that can be broken or changed due to changes to the brain, and how changes to the brain- particularly due to accidents- effects what we see, hear, feel, think and experience. What is the “self?”  This is set in Nebraska with the Platte River and the migration of the sand cranes and their coming extinction and the near extinction of whoopers already as a primary theme and water wars and the US in Iraq as current issues-

Cover blurb: The Echo Maker is a gripping mystery that explores the improvised human self and the even more precarious brain that splits us from and joins us to the rest of creation.  On a winter night on a remote Nebraska road, 27-year-old Mark Schluter flips his truck in a near-fatal accident.  His older sister, Karin, his only near kin, returns reluctantly to their hometown to nurse Mark back from a traumatic head injury.  But when he emerges from a protracted coma, Mark believes that this woman-who looks, acts. and sounds just like his sister- is really an imposter.  Shattered by her brother’s refusal to recognize her, Karin contacts the cognitive neurologist Gerald Weber (think Oliver Sacks) famous for his case histories describing the infinitely bizarre world of brain disorders. Weber recognizes Mark’s condition as a rare case of Capgras syndrome-the delusion that people in one’s life are doubles or imposters-and eagerly investigates.  What he discovers in Mark and himself slowly undermines his own sense of being and worth. Meanwhile, Mark, armed only with a note left by an anonymous witness to his accident, attempts to learn what happened the night of the accident.  The truth of that night will change the lives of all three- ands others close to them- beyond recognition.

LYRICAL WRITING, GORGEOUS WRITING, especially about the birds.  Great case histories about brain disorders. How the brain functions is an integral part of the story plot.

SF & Fantasy