Ashworth Hall

Ashworth Hall places Superintendent Thomas Pitt in the middle of a volatile gathering: Irish Protestant and Catholic leaders assembled at an English country house for secret negotiations over home rule, where their host is found murdered in his bath on the first evening. Perry uses the locked-gate structure of the country house mystery to trap her characters in a pressure cooker where political assassination and personal revenge are equally possible explanations.

Jenny Sterlin narrates the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series with a confidence in the Victorian period detail that makes the historical setting feel inhabited rather than reconstructed. Her performance holds the novel's considerable political complexity without letting it overwhelm the human drama, and the intrigue between the Irish factions is kept appropriately tense.