Alone in a country house...

Before the Poison by Peter Robinson.

A review by Marlyn Beebe.

Chris Lowndes is a successful film score composer, well-known in the business and financially very comfortable.  Having promised himself he'd return home at the age of sixty,  he  buys an isolated country house near the Yorkshire town where he grew up.  He hadn't expected to be doing it without his wife at his side, but she'd died a few months earlier.  He goes anyway, telling himself he needs solitude to work on the piano sonata he's always wanted to compose.

Having completed the purchase well before he returns to England, Lowndes is unsure what to expect when he arrives at the house late one October afternoon.  He certainly doesn't expect to learn that the wife of the original owner, a physician named Ernest Fox, had been convicted of murdering him.

Out of curiosity, Lowndes begins to research the history of the house and it's early inhabitants.   The more he learns about Grace Fox and her family, the more he becomes convinced that she was not guilty of the crime.  Although he knows better than to tell anyone, he thinks he catches glimpses of her around the house.  People begin to accuse him of being obsessed with Grace and her story, and it certainly appears that way, though Chris believes that all he's trying to do is uncover the truth. 

Throughout Lowndes' search, the reader has the uncomfortable feeling that there is some underlying reason for  his investigation.  It's not expressed outright, but extremely subtle hints that this is the case permeate the narrative, very much in the vein of Rebecca, 

In fact, as in Du Maurier's novel, although the narrative is in the first person from the protagonist's point of view, the central character of the story is a ghost whose history somehow becomes intertwined with that of the narrator. 

As a devotee of Robinson's Inspector Banks, I was at first disappointed that Before the Poison was not part of that series.  But this is such a well-written and well-told tale that the sadness was short-lived.

Peter Robinson is the author of the now 16-book Inspector Alan Banks mystery series, the first of which, Gallows View, was published in 1987.  The next DCI Banks book is set to be released in the UK in August.

On the Horizon: What We're Excited to Read

As avid readers, we’d thought we’d share some upcoming titles we’re looking forward to.

Marlyn is eager for a little poison:

Before the Poison by Peter Robinson (William Morrow, 21 February 2012): This will be Robinson’s first standalone since 1995’s No Cure For Love, although he has published several short-story collections. His plots are complex without being arcane, and his characters are well-depicted.

The publisher’s summary of the novel reads as follows: 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 . . .

Poison Flower by Thomas Perry, Jane Whitefield #7 (Grove/Atlantic, 6 March 2012): Jane Whitefield helps people disappear. Actually, she’s the non-government version of the Witness Protection Program. Her clients aren’t necessarily witnesses, but they are usually innocent of any crime.

Poison Flower is the first Jane Whitefield book since Runner in 2010, and is summarized here: Jane is spiriting James Shelby, a man unjustly convicted of his wife’s murder, out of the heavily guarded criminal court building in downtown Los Angeles. But within minutes, men posing as police officers kidnap Jane and, when she tries to escape, shoot her. Jane’s captors are employees of the man who really killed Shelby’s wife, who believes he won’t be safe until Shelby is dead, and his men will do anything to force Jane to reveal Shelby’s hiding place. She manages to escape but she is alone, wounded, thousands of miles from home with no money and no identification, hunted by the police as well as her captors.

On a lighter note, Gayle is looking forward to:

Michele Scott's next, as yet untitled book. It's about a young girl who comes to L.A. to break into the music scene. She moves into a house that's littered with the spirits of dead rock stars who all talk to her (yes, I think Elvis shows up). Of course, there's a murder to be solved.

Also, Dancing at the Chance, which is NOT a mystery, but historical romance by DeAnna Cameron. Says Gayle: I don't usually read romance, but I read her book, The Belly Dancer, and loved it. Dancing at the Chance takes place in the vaudeville era, in New York City. DeAnna did such a fine job taking me to turn-of-the-century Chicago with The Belly Dancer (at the World's Fair), I can't wait to go back to old NYC.

And L.J. has plans to read The Litigators, by John Grisham, which just came out. Not only does she enjoy Grisham’s legal thrillers, but this one involves a drug company, another favorite subject of hers, after seven years on a pharmaceutical magazine.

What books are you looking forward to? Share your reading excitement.