Anne Perry's "Midnight at Marble Arch," and More Anne Perry has killed off a lot of women in a lot of ways since she began writing her atmospheric mysteries about Thomas Pitt, a detective in late-Victorian London, and his highborn wife, Charlotte. But, strange as it may seem for such an unflinching observer of the criminal justice system, until now Perry hadn't trained her exacting eye on the subject of rape. MIDNIGHT AT MARBLE ARCH (Ballantine, $27) makes up for that lapse with a vengeance. Without losing her grip on the refined language appropriate to the day, Perry has written a sweeping and scandalous exposé of sexual brutality amid the upper classes. When violated women in Victorian novels say their lives are ruined, they aren't being melodramatic. Many women never get over rape. Can't bear the shame and the horror of it," according to the police surgeon performing an autopsy on the wife of a merchant banker who took a lethal dose of laudanum after being raped and brutally beaten. Not only do the victims feel themselves damaged beyond repair, he explains, but their husbands often blame their wives for provocative behavior - and themselves for failing to protect those living under their care. The stigma is even worse for Angeles Castelbranco, the 16-year-old daughter of the Portuguese ambassador. Experts in the art of reading social cues, Charlotte Pitt and her great-aunt, Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould, are made aware of the young woman's distress simply by noting how she recoils when a young man approaches her at a party. Thomas, who now occupies an exalted position as head of Special Branch, is busy on sensitive matters of security like a possible war with the Boers in southern Africa. So it falls to his friend, Victor Narraway, to continue the investigation when other women of good reputation are violently attacked. Although the subject is strictly taboo in this society, Perry has perfected a delicate touch in approaching the untouchable. Even when dealing with sexual violence, she applies the same nuanced technique that she uses to indicate a woman's age, class and marital status by recording the precise shade of her dress. It's more than a neat trick: it makes readers aware of how the violation of women, those symbols of social stability, can send a modern civilization back to the dark ages. Every narrative tactic that Anne Perry executes with a graceful flick of the wrist, David Morrell attacks with balled fists in MURDER AS A FINE ART (Mulholland/Little, Brown, $25.99), a hot-blooded account of a mid-Victorian case of multiple murder. In the London of 1854, Inspector Sean Ryan, an Irishman in a city that hates Irish immigrants, knows to hide his flaming red hair under a cap before taking to the unruly streets of the East End to investigate the killings of a shopkeeper and his entire household. The forensic science of the day may be primitive, but Ryan can see the similarities between these carefully staged slaughters and the horrific Ratcliffe Highway murders of 1811 - a domestic massacre luridly detailed in a contentious work, "On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts," by the infamous opium-eater Thomas De Quincey. And wouldn't you know, De Quincey just happens to be in town. Morrell's style takes some getting used to, since he keeps switching time frames and points of view and dropping bits of background (like a lovely little lecture on laudanum) into the narrative. But, as might be expected from the creator of Rambo, Morrell writes action scenes like nobody's business. And that can be a kind of gift when you have the urge to step out of the drawing room and into a rat-infested alley. A good storyteller - and R. B. Chesterton is quite a good storyteller - knows to lower her voice when she's talking about ghosts. This author (who writes cozy mysteries under her real name, Carolyn Haines) reaches into the grave for the sepulchral tone in which she narrates THE DARKLING (Pegasus Crime, $24.95), a moody tale about a sad town that comes to grief trying to relive its glittering past. During the 1940s, movie stars flocked to Coden, Ala., "where pleasure and vice could be indulged" in peace and for a price at the Paradise Inn. But by 1974, the pretty people are gone, the hotel is boarded up, and the locals have linked their dreams for the town's rebirth to the Hendersons, a golden couple with three golden children. Having restored a grand house and raised hopes they might rescue the Paradise Inn, these California transplants spread more sunshine by taking in a homeless teenager and hiring a live-in tutor. That's how Marie Bosarge ("You can call me Mimi"), the 21-year-old narrator, comes to witness the mysterious events in this spellbinding tale, offering eloquent evidence that Southern storytelling is indeed a very special art form. Even writers who have found their groove like to refresh themselves and their sleuths. Jon Talton started the process when he arranged for his Phoenix sheriff, Mike Peralta, to be voted out of office, making things considerably tougher for his series hero, David Mapstone, the sheriff's deputy. In THE NIGHT DETECTIVES (Poisoned Pen, $24.95) Mapstone and Peralta have gone into business as private detectives, and their first case sends Mapstone to San Diego to investigate the death of a young woman whose thuggish "brother" isn't happy with the official suicide verdict. The case itself is only mildly interesting, but the trip drags Mapstone out of his slump, gives his marriage a boost and gets the new partnership off to a flying start.