Peter Robinson was a writer of good quality detective novels, especially those featuring Alan Banks – see my review of one here. I enjoy that series and have now read most of them. Before the Poison is a stand-alone novel by the same author set in the Yorkshire Dales.
Chris grew up in Leeds but went to Hollywood where he made his name writing film scores. He has always longed to retire to the Yorkshire Dales and now he is sixty he has finally taken that step, albeit without his beloved wife who has recently died. The house that he buys is isolated and was once occupied by a local GP who was allegedly murdered by his wife Grace, who was hanged for the crime. Chris decides to take up the case and investigate what happened in the past to determine whether or not the murder happened as it was assumed that it did – he is driven by the fact that the evidence was mostly circumstantial.
There are a number of threads in this story. Firstly, there is Chris coming to terms with his grief and looking for how he can function in a place which is very new to him. There is then his investigation which takes him to Paris and South Africa. The narrative also includes extracts from a book of famous trials and also entries from Grace’s diaries. As the story progresses lots of theories are proposed and then discarded until we know the truth – there is a little bit of a supernatural element at this point but if you choose to disbelieve it the story still hangs together.
This is a wonderfully crafted novel where the author ties all the threads together to give us a perfectly satisfactory solution to the mystery as well as moving Chris’ own life story along. It’s not a fast-paced story and it isn’t filled with adventure and peril for the main characters but it’s clever and very entertaining. I enjoyed it a lot.
Anne Is Reading 