Before the Poison
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3.7 • 60 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From bestselling author Peter Robinson comes this atmospheric, suspenseful, and thrilling standalone novel.
Through the years of success in Hollywood composing film scores, Chris always promised his wife they'd return to the Yorkshire Dales one day. Now a widower, Chris feels he must not forget his promise. Back in the Dales, he rents an isolated house that will allow him the space to grieve and the peace to compose his piano sonata. But when he finds that the house was the scene of a murder in the 1950s, and the convicted murderer was one of the last women hanged in England, he finds himself increasingly distracted by the events of sixty years before . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the outset of this haunting stand-alone from Arthur Ellis Award winner Robinson (No Cure for Love), British film composer Chris Lowndes, a recent widower, leaves California after more than 30 years for the peace and quiet of the Yorkshire countryside. He buys isolated Kilnsgate House, which the estate agent neglects to mention was the site of a sensational crime. Intercut are passages from a fictional true crime book, Famous Trials, depicting the 1953 case against Grace Fox, who was convicted of poisoning her husband, Dr. Ernest Fox, at Kilnsgate, and hanged. While Chris's initial interest is simple curiosity, the more he learns about Grace, the more his interest veers toward obsession. In piecing together the murder case and Grace's extraordinary life as a nurse during WWII, Chris discovers as much about himself as he does about her. Robinson manages a melancholy tone without veering into the maudlin, and the presence of Grace Fox permeates every page.
