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• 書誌情報と紹介文から、受賞時のジャンル性や主題が確認できる。読者向けには、設定の明快さと受賞作らしい着想の強さが評価の中心になる作品である。

レビュー

• Before the poison

  I just love the story line and having read all of DI Banks novels it was nice to read the same quality of this book.

• British Cold Case

  I, personally, had never read any of Peter Robinson's books prior this novel. 'Before the Poison' is written as a stand alone and that was right. The book is a complete and satisfying experience all in one story. It opens with a Hollywood composer returning home to England after many fulfilling years in California. The Character, Chris Lowndes is sixty and a new widower. The draw to continue his life in England in the Yorkshire dales is a mystery to his mother and brother, but, you quickly realize that Chris needs to find an 'ending' to his marriage/death and his childhood memories. Then, Chris will be freed to live his future. Chris buys via internet, a property. The house exceeds his needs but he quickly feels at home. There is an atmosphere which feeds his composer heart but also tells him, through shadows, voices, and even a vision in a mirror, that perhaps the house is not completely at 'rest.' Why? The 'why' is revealed slowly to Chris but not to us, the readers. The Author cleverly leads us directly into the mystery of the house and not gently. Rather through a shocking view of a prison hanging. This novel is not a cozy murder but more an investigative look at a cold case. Did Grace kill her husband or not? Was it justified or not? These are just a few questions that arise. I think you will enjoy the journey to the answers, and let's not forget Chris' mysteries as well. A good British murder mystery set from the 1950's to 2010's.

• Before the Poison

  A friend recommended it..... a wonderful read....I was so sad when I finished it.... it is just so good I am about to read it again.... so many stories in one book .... so believable ...and so well written...it just kept my attention ...and I am not a natural reader!! Even my husband said " are you still reading ! " Just brilliant ....

• Back on top form - but without DCI Banks.

  First things first - I ordered this book assuming it was a Banks novel, and I'll bet I was not alone in doing so. With a Banks reference on the front cover, you could even make the same mistake in a bookshop if you were pressed for time. The great news is that it's as good as anything Peter Robinson has ever written (and much better than 'Bad Boy', the last Banks novel, which was possibly the weakest so far) so even if you acquired 'Before the Poison' in error you certainly won't regret doing so. The novel belongs to a subgroup of the crime genre - the retrospective investigation. Cold cases may currently be hot property in TV circles, but they have a long history in literature. In modern fiction, probably the most famous example is Josephine Tey's 1951 novel 'The Daughter of Time'; a more recently successful example was Colin Dexter's 'The Wench is Dead', the eighth Morse novel, published in 1989. In both of these novels the investigator is a policeman confined to bed, with a sidekick doing research on his behalf, but the subgroup is very flexible; there are no rules other than that the case should no longer be a current investigation and the character poking into it should have no previous direct knowledge of it. The case under examination may involve historical events, or may - as in this case - be fictional. Chris Lowndes grew up in the mean streets of Leeds, but became a successful composer of film scores, based in the United States. Always intending to return 'home' when the time was right, he does so after his wife dies prematurely from cancer. Approaching 60, he takes up residence in October 2010 as the sole occupant of a 250-year old and rather dilapidated gentleman's residence in a small and remote dale a couple of miles from Richmond. He discovers that the house was the scene of a murder in 1953, when local GP Ernest Fox was apparently murdered by his wife, Grace - a crime for which she was subsequently executed. His curiosity whetted by the discovery, he sets out to obtain further details - a quest which takes him across Yorkshire and subsequently to Paris and South Africa. In the best traditions of crime fiction, elaborate theories are painstakingly constructed and equally painfully demolished as, slowly but surely, the truth emerges. There are plentiful surprises, but everything fits into its place in the jigsaw. There's no cheating by the author; the reader is privy to all the information as it accumulates, and is free to make his or her own deductions - which, of course, will almost certainly prove to be wrong! In terms of structure, the book consists of chapters in two sections, the first part containing historical material and the second (and larger) part moving the current story forward. In the first half of the book, the chapters begin with extracts from a near-contemporary book in a series covering famous trials; the remaining chapters are prefaced by extracts from Grace Fox's wartime diaries, when she served as a Queen Alexandra Nurse. This arrangement works well - certainly better than I expected when I began to read the book. I can't, despite my best efforts, find anything in the book to complain about, but one or two things need to be kept in mind, particularly by readers aged under 50. Firstly, there is the rather florid prose of the extracts from the 'Famous Trials' book. This was apparently a mass-market paperback, in the fairly early days of paperback publishing. Especially where morality was involved, the style of writing is historically accurate. It was, perhaps, the natural ancestor of the moral trumpeting of today's tabloid press. Secondly, it seems unthinkable today that someone could be convicted - much less hanged - on purely circumstantial and largely ambiguous evidence. It wasn't seen as unthinkable in the 1950s. Those were the days when the law hanged Derek Bentley for being present (although under police restraint) at the time of a murder, on the basis that he told a juvenile with a gun to 'let him have it'. Murder by ambiguity! It was also the time when the brilliant Enigma codebreaking mathematician Alan Turing was driven to suicide by the law's penalty for his sexual orientation. In its historical context, the outcome of the fictional trial was perfectly credible, though statistically the sentence might well have been commuted to life imprisonment. Finally, the book is not fast-paced; the nature of the story makes this impractical. It does however build steadily, and though it can't be described as 'unputdownable' it holds the reader's interest well and is a thoroughly satisfying read. It's certainly one of my favourites of the year. Buy it - you're in for a treat!

• Not in the league of the Banks series

  The problem with this book is that it is not sufficiently well written to be treated as a book that aspires to be literature. In fact, it is quite badly written which is a surprise as the author's Banks series is written well. I lost count of the dull lists of music the narrator listens to and the somewhat pointless sidelines. The main plot works well enough, but the whole book is a bit stodgy. Stick to Banks.

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