Country House Murder (Sweet Poison - David Roberts)

Member Name: elkiedee

Product:	Sweet Poison - David Roberts
Date:	26/02/05 (649 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Convincing 1930s historical setting, a Communist female character and a political flavour, fun with Golden Age references

Disadvantages: Very slow start to the story, wishy washy liberal hero

A guest at a country house dinner party collapses and dies, and it soon becomes clear he has been poisoned. Two of the other guests are convinced that this was murder, and set out to discover who did it and why. This is a classic opening associated with Golden Age detective stories written in the 1930s, and Sweet Poison pays a sort of homage to that tradition, and in particular perhaps to Dorothy L Sayers (who introduced her most famous characters in a book called Strong Poison).

Sweet Poison is a historical mystery, set in August 1935. I found Roberts' handling of his setting quite convincing, with a clear setting of details and attitudes in their time and place, but not so much detail as to distract from the events in the story. The Duke of Mersham has invited some influential figures to dinner to discuss relations between England and Germany. The dead man was General Sir Alistair Craig VC, and the other guests include a newspaper tycoon, his wife and stepdaughter, a Conservative politician, a pacifist bishop and a German diplomat said to have the ear of Chancellor Adolf Hitler. (At this time, a substantial section of the British upper classes were interested in Germany and Italy as offering some possible answers to the threat of social unrest and worse, following war, revolution in Russia and economic depression).

The central characters in the book are Lord Edward Corinth, the Duke’s younger brother, who reluctantly agreed to come along to make up the numbers, and Verity Browne, a journalist. They met earlier that day as Edward crashed his car and Verity gave him a lift, and told him on the way that she would be visiting the castle the next day to write an article for Country Life. He only finds out too late that Verity actually works for the Daily Worker, a Communist newspaper, as it has exclusive coverage of the General’s murder. Quite angry, Edward seeks Verity out to confront her, but the two are drawn together despite their differences. Though neither will admit it they rather fancy each other, and they are both concerned that the murderer should be identified and brought to justice. This is all much more plausible somehow through the storytelling than in my summary.

The story alternates between the viewpoints of Edward and Verity, although I think more of the narrative is taken up with Edward. A lot of time at the start is spent introducing all the characters and explaining how they come to be in one place, and I felt that this slow beginning was one of the book’s weaknesses. I was keen to give it a chance though, as David Roberts’ books had been highly recommended by people whose opinions I respected. Also, I liked the idea of a 1930s setting and a female Communist sleuth. My patience was rewarded, as the interaction between the characters and the combination of a social comedy with a more serious murder plot did gradually draw me in.

Edward is reluctant to interest himself in politics, but when he does, he is very critical of Verity and her Communist friends but also of the fascist sympathies of some of the aristocracy. I have heard the author speak briefly in a discussion which was somewhat derailed by the contributions of other panel members, and I suspect that Edward is the character who most closely holds many of the author’s own views and attitudes.

Verity is the daughter of a wealthy leftwing lawyer, who doesn’t feel able to be a Communist Party member himself but is happy to support them financially. She is passionate about the pursuit of justice and campaigning for a better society, but she also struggles to be taken seriously, because of her gender and her background, by many of her comrades. Her taste for nice clothes and other bourgeois trappings doesn’t always go down to well either.

Finding out who murdered the General involves tracking down the other dinner party guests and trying to probe into why they might have wanted to murder him. In some cases this involves a bit of planning and trickery, and even danger, and their investigations ultimately only seem to reveal that everyone might have had motives.

As they were sleuthing, I really enjoyed the dynamic that developed between Edward and Verity, as the unacknowledged sexual tension builds up. They don’t admit it in this novel, but that makes it all the more intriguing somehow, and is in keeping with the way this novel harks back to the Golden Age, and to Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, who bicker through a series of novels set over a period of years. I also liked the scene in which Verity takes Edward along to a poetry reading at a leftwing bookshop, and he meets her comrade ad on-off lover.

It took me time to get into this book, but I enjoyed it once I did. I am currently spendng some more time with Verity and Edward, and seeing how they react against the background of Spain just before the Civil War breaks out in Bones of the Buried (2nd in this series). Other books about the characters are Hollow Crown and Dangerous Sea.

Sweet Poison by David Roberts
Published by Constable & Robinson 2001
Paperback 2002 at a cover price of £6.99
ISBN 1841194026
277 pages

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