We love getting librarian feedback on upcoming titles (duh!), so when Eleanor Bukowsky of Brooklyn Public Library showed us her Amazon review of Before the Poison, we were stoked.
***
Before the Poison, by Peter Robinson, begins in October 2010. British-born Chris Lowndes is an accomplished musician whose film scores have earned him a bit of fame, a sizeable nest egg, and even an Academy Award. He is a recent widower who is struggling to adjust to the death of his beloved wife, Laura. After living in California for thirty-five years, Lowndes purchases an isolated and rambling old mansion in Yorkshire, England, where he plans to regroup emotionally and write a sonata that will secure him recognition as a serious composer. Although he begins work on his new composition, Chris is quickly sidetracked by a deeply intriguing puzzle concerning Grace Fox, who lived with her husband and son in Kilnsgate House (Chris's new home), until her death in 1953 at age forty.
Grace was the sensitive and talented wife of a prominent and much older man. She volunteered to nurse wounded soldiers overseas during the Second World War, and was deeply traumatized by the horrible suffering and atrocities that she witnessed. Grace returned from the war transformed, no longer content to be a passive observer, and her subsequent actions would help determine her fate. Chris becomes obsessed with Grace, and he spares no expense in tracking down everyone who knew her. He has decided, for a variety of reasons (some of them personal), to set the record straight concerning this beautiful, courageous and, he believes, honorable woman.
What Peter Robinson has done is what all great mystery writers try to do–elevate a genre that is sometimes dismissed as light and insubstantial into an art form. Before the Poison is creatively structured: The author's decision to move back and forth between Grace's journal entries, passages from a book written almost sixty years earlier, and Chris's present life works superbly. Robinson's ingenious plot is breathtakingly suspenseful and the novel is enhanced by its richly developed cast of characters, evocative descriptive writing, and intense atmosphere. The author explores such thought-provoking themes as prejudice against women, the horrible consequences of war, and the injustices that tarnish even supposedly enlightened legal systems.
Robinson analyzes constructive and destructive relationships in all of their variations–between parents and children, lovers, extended family, friends, and acquaintances. In addition, the author draws on the twin motifs of film and music brilliantly, contrasting quiet scenes with passages of high drama, using foreshadowing to good effect, and wrapping up the proceedings with a stunning climax that few will see coming. Before the Poison deserves to be ranked among Peter Robinson's most satisfying and provocative works of fiction.
***
Thank you for sharing, Eleanor!
– Annie