A Christmas Deliverance

Bestseller Perry’s fine 20th Christmas-themed crime novel set in the same Victorian world as her William Monk and Charlotte and Thomas Pitt books (after 2021’s A Christmas Legacy) features Dr. Crowe, an idealist who runs a free medical clinic on the riverbank of the Thames for anyone in need. When Crowe runs into Eliza Hollister, a former patient he treated after a traffic accident and for whom he has romantic feelings, he’s disturbed to see her verbally abused by Paul Dolan, whose father imports luxury goods. Crowe is even more upset to discover that Eliza has become engaged against her will to Dolan, in order to help her father, who’s in financial trouble. Crowe’s curiosity about the Dolans leads him to probe a fatal fire at a warehouse Eliza’s father owned, which was deemed accidental. What he learns leads him to dig deeper. Meanwhile, Scuff, Crowe’s assistant, who was rescued as a child by Monk and his wife from a life of scavenging the Thames at low tide, keeps the clinic running. The gripping plot is matched by moving portrayals of the clinic’s clientele. Readers drawn to Dickens’s searing portraits of the underprivileged will appreciate Perry’s homage to those characters. Agent: Donald Maass, Donald Maass Literary. (Nov.)