Before the Poison
Chris Lowndes built a comfortable career composing scores for films in Hollywood. But after twenty-five years abroad, and still quietly reeling from the death of his beloved wife, he decides to return to the Yorkshire dales of his youth. To ease the move, he buys Kilnsgate House, a rambling old...
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Chris Lowndes built a comfortable career composing scores for films in Hollywood. But after twenty-five years abroad, and still quietly reeling from the death of his beloved wife, he decides to return to the Yorkshire dales of his youth. To ease the move, he buys Kilnsgate House, a rambling old mansion deep in the country. Although Chris finds Kilnsgate charming, something about the house disturbs him, a vague sensation that the long-empty rooms have been waiting for him—feelings made ever stronger when he learns that the house was the scene of a murder more than fifty years before. The former owner, a prominent doctor named Ernest Arthur Fox, was supposedly poisoned by his beautiful and much younger wife, Grace. Arrested and brought to trial, Grace was found guilty and hanged for the crime. His curiosity piqued, Chris talks to the locals and searches through archives for information about the case. But the more he discovers, the more convinced he becomes that Grace may have been innocent. Ignoring warnings to leave it alone, he sets out to discover what really happened over half a century ago—a quest that takes him deep into the past and into a web of secrets that lie all too close to the present.
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Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9780062004796 (0062004794)
Publish date: February 21st 2012
Publisher: William Morrow
Pages no: 368
Edition language: English
Category:
Paranormal,
Novels,
History,
European Literature,
British Literature,
Cultural,
Historical Fiction,
Mystery,
Thriller,
Mystery Thriller,
Crime,
World War II,
Canada,
Ghosts
I won't lie - I missed Banks. It's so comfortable having him at the centre of Robinson's mysteries that you almost resent the effort of figuring out the stranger (especially since this is a first-person novel, so there are the added complexities of whether the narrator is reliable or not). Nonethele...
Just the type of story I love. A Hollywood composer comes back home to the Yorkshire dales after a personal loss and finds himself drawn into trying to find out the details of a notorious crime that was committed in the out of the way country house he purchased. A very well written character drive...
I wish this book would have been from Grace's point of view and not Chris. I didn't really like Chris at all and a hard time caring enough about him to want to follow his story. I also hated his relationship with Heather. I could have without having to read about Heather. The part that I loved most ...
I'm giving this one up after the self-imposed 100 pages rule. It's moving too slowly, I'm not getting a sense of the main character, and there seems to be zero motivation for his actions. Also, he's too damn wordy when it comes to things like the movie the character decides to watch to remedy his in...
This is a departure from Peter Robinson's usual Inspector Banks novels. I think this one is good in that he uses the past and present to create a haunting story that is intriguing and keeps the reader interested. When Chris Loundes moves into his new/old home in Yorkshire he is surprised to learn th...