Before the Poison - Softcover

Robinson, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 077107624X ISBN 13: 9780771076244

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart, 2012

Synopsis

From bestselling author Peter Robinson comes this atmospheric, suspenseful, and thrilling standalone novel

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 . . .
From the Hardcover edition.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

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.

About the Author:

Yorkshire-born Peter Robinson, a long-time Toronto resident, is one of the world's top writers of crime fiction and a winner of numerous awards, including the United States' Edgar Award; the British Dagger in the Library Award; France's prestigious Grand Prix de Littérature Policière; Denmark's Palle Rosenkrantz Award; and, in Canada, several Arthur Ellis Best Crime Novel Awards. In 2010, he was given the Crime Writers of Canada's Derrick Murdoch Award for his outstanding contribution to crime fiction, the Harbourfront Festival Prize for a body of work, and he was also awarded an honorary degree by the University of Windsor. His novels are published around the world and have been translated into nineteen languages.
From the Hardcover edition.

About this edition

• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 077107624X
• ISBN 13: 9780771076244
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448