Sweet Poison (Lord Edward Corinth and Verity Browne, #1) by David Roberts

Sweet Poison (Lord Edward Corinth and Verity Browne, #1) Reviews

• 
  Jenine

  At just past the halfway mark in this book a main character discovers a dead body in a house in 1937 London. He goes to a neighbor and asks for a telephone, they don't have one, he's directed to another neighbor who does have a phone. He dials 999 and requests police assistance.
  
  I threw down the book and howled about anachronism and "how young is this author, anyway?!" Then my husband looked up the fact that London has the oldest emergency phone system in the world, it was instituted in 1937. My howls are dimmed but not extinguished. The average joe would have no knowledge of this brand new system that had just been created. And I have never come across the 999 thing in any 30s or 40s novel I can remember reading.
  
  Later in the book a main character is speaking to Duke SoandSo and says something like, "You don't mind if we go out to the garden, Duke?" She's supposed to be a well educated young gentlewoman who has been slumming with the communists. But no matter what her political sympathies I trust she would know to refer to her host as Your Grace rather than Duke, like some sort of American gangster.
  
  I finished the book to see who dunnit and which way the protags were going to jump. I won't be pursuing this series.
• 
  Idril Celebrindal

  Wow. I made it 48 pages in and I think in that time the life story of every character was dumped out in block paragraphs. My favorite part was the half page narrator explanation of why one character was a pacificist, which was then immediately followed by that character repeating to his wife the exact thoughts and feelings the narrator had just explained to us.
  
  This book is a perfect example of telling and not showing.
• 
  Katie Bee

  A dreary, charmless book with endless infodumps of backstory exposition, a threadbare and tedious plot, and characters both cliched and unattractive. I should have stopped reading a few pages in, when one character's backstory involves an Evil Gay who marries an innocent virgin to hide his sexuality, rapes her on their wedding night, and spends the rest of his (short) life emotionally torturing her. (None of this is even relevant to the story - it's just one of the many interminable backstories foisted on the unlucky reader.)
  
  Alas, I try to never abandon a book, and I was hoping it might get better, so I persevered to the end. Spoiler alert: it doesn't get better. Save yourself the shopworn cliches, the world's most boring love triangle, and the endless navel-gazing screeds about Communism, and avoid this book. I will certainly be returning books 2 and 3 to the library unread.
  
  Final note: if you are sensitive to animal abuse, be aware that a beloved pet dog is brutally slaughtered to punish/warn its owner.
• 
  Tom Ruffles

  (This is a joint review of Sweet Poison and Bones of the Buried)
  
  Sweet Poison
  
  Take a large helping of Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, add a little Albert Campion, a dash of Roderick Alleyn and a sprinkling of The Remains of the Day, and you have the perfect recipe for David Roberts’ debut novel Sweet Poison. Set in 1935, it features a dashing yet sensitive adventurer and man-about-town Lord Edward Corinth and his unlikely collaboration with a card-carrying but strangely alluring Communist, Miss Verity Browne. But Ned isn’t slumming it by any means: Verity is actually, despite her proletarian-oriented political beliefs, from the upper-middle drawer (she drives a Morgan, after all) so it isn’t as if Edward is attracted to a factory worker. Not that it would matter because despite his aristocratic origins, he is surprisingly liberal in his views. In fact more so than his gentleman’s gentleman, who is the really hidebound one.
  
  The plot concerns the efforts of Edward’s older brother, the Duke of Mersham, to broker peace talks between influential figures in England and Germany in order to avert another war. Unfortunately his plans are scuppered when a distinguished elderly general is poisoned at one of his intimate gatherings - but was it suicide or murder? After a slow start setting up the characters and the weekend house part at which this dreadful event occurs, the novel follows Edward and Vcrity interrogating suspects as the threads lead them into ever-murkier waters, including the London underworld. The two bond, but Edward is still capable of casting his eye elsewhere, and Verity has personal issues with a senior Party comrade, so the path of true love – or even working out precisely what their relationship is, where the practical element of the investigation stops and something else starts – will, you can be sure, not be a smooth one.
  
  There are rather a lot of coincidences to oil the plot, but what is quite refreshing is that Edward and Verity do not put the pieces together for a final denouement, and as Edward ruefully concedes, if only to himself as everything falls into place, his deductions were inaccurate and he was behind developments every step of the way. While there is no Gosford Park-style bitchiness, it is nice to see a bit of real life intrude, even if sketchily, into the normally hermetic world of the detective story in the form of 1930s politics and the long shadows which the Great War cast over the period. There is also more sex and drugs than you would expect to find in a Golden Age novel, and more humour as well. Sweet Poison ends with a possible rival to Verity for Edward’s affections, but we know deep down there is much more mileage in Edward’s relationship with Verity, even if she is in a different country at the conclusion. Things may be helped along if at some point Verity becomes a murder suspect, as happened in the case of both Wimsey and Alleyn. One feels a sequel coming.
  
  And here it is.
  
  Bones of the Buried
  
  Set six months later, in 1936, the action becomes international, shuttling between England – mainly Eton – and Spain, with civil war looming menacingly on the horizon. To the detective models Roberts has already used he has added a dash of Eric Ambler and Graham Greene. Verity, working as a foreign correspondent, comes back to England from Spain to urge Edward to return with her to save her Stalinist lover, sentenced to death for murder. It is a much more complex, and satisfying, novel than its predecessor. Roberts has hit his stride, and apart from some awkward references back to the first book, which will mean little if you haven’t read it, and are pointless if you have, has a faster pace. As in the first novel Edward shows himself to be a less than stellar detective, and while he gets there in the end, there is no satisfying Agatha Christie-style denouement.
  
  The Spanish political situation is a backdrop to the detection and while it is inevitably simplified (this isn’t Homage to Catalonia), Bones does acknowledge that the political situation of the period was not a straightforward left against right. The characterisation is more rounded and plotting is tighter than in Sweet Poison, even if there is still a reliance on coincidence, though, tongue-in-cheek, Roberts has Edward say that he doesn’t believe in them. There is also more sex than in the average Dorothy L. Sayers. Some of this is between Verity and a fictionalised version of Ernest Hemingway, though Hemingway was not in Spain in 1936. There are some anachronistic phrases, and a member of the Communist Party would have referred not to Trotskyists but to Trotskyites, but Roberts does maintain a satisfying period ambience.
  
  The depiction of the association between Edward and Verity is not one of a traditional romantic development. They have a complicated relationship and there is no sense that their getting together is inevitable. In fact, ’V’ is even more shrill in this outing than in the previous one, and for some readers she may cross the dividing line between feisty independence and being selfishly annoying. It is hard to work out what Edward sees in her, other than the negative reason that she is utterly unlike the bland debs who normally throw themselves at him. He might be enlightened, but in aristocratic 1930s terms his tolerant, if anguished, attitude to Verity’s chaotic emotional life just does not ring true. As before, the novel ends with Edward and Verity apart, with scope for a further instalment; in fact the series has now concluded in 1939 with ten novels charting the pair’s will-they-won‘t-they relationship among a rising body count, set against the ever-darkening clouds of war.
  
• 
  Denise Mullins

  So many things wrong with this book; where do I start? While I expected that this mystery marketed as a vintage cosy would rely on flat characters, in his attempt to be clever, David Roberts's development of Lord Edward Corinth and several other key males was just wincingly ill-conceived and inappropriate.
  There are several instances of explicit rape in which the females totally acquiesce (one woman willingly over a period of months). This might lead a reader to believe he at least harbors some misogynistic tendencies. Male characters also appear to lack empathy or a moral compass; at one point a character blandly reveals to an acquaintance that he's probably betrayed his country on the eve of WW II, and later the protagonist offers solace by suggesting that a game of squash will right everything. In comparison, women are either repeatedly engaged in dishonest, insensitive acts as climbers or vamp around as vapid arm-candy.
  With all these flaws,Roberts tries clumsily to steer the conclusion to a mildly plausible explanation only to mar it with a heinously unforgivable act of cruelty that he mocks before a half-hearted attempt of conscience. Hard to fathom that this spawned a string of sequels.
• 
  Begona Fernandez

  To be fair I only really read a few chapters but he writing style grated me so much that i could not face to read another page. Pity because I live mystery novels and I like the period it is set in however life is too short to confront a narrator that has to tell you everything trying to be clever instead of just showing it
• 
  Sarah

  First half moved quite slowly, but it did improve. From memory the later books in the series are more interesting and faster-paced.
• 
  Jenny Wenham

  I enjoyed the characters and the settings but found the story a bit odd and the ending unsatisfactory. I'm unsure if I'll read the next in the series.
• 
  Margaret Haigh

  First in a series set in England in the 1930s, a great detective duo, a young pretty Communist and the son of a duke. Will definitely look for more of the series.
• 
  JackieB

  I was expecting a traditional cozy crime from the synopsis. In summary, a duke invites a group of people to his country home for the weekend, someone dies unexpectedly, the police are incompetent, so some amateur sleuths solve it.
  However, David Roberts set his crime in 1935, and the duke is bringing people together in an attempt to stave off the war that everyone knows is coming. This means that Mr Roberts can use the guests' different attitudes to the coming war to set up an unsettled, tense background to his crime (not to mention a possible motive). He cleverly maintains and develops this tension throughout the book. He also created some complex characters. I particularly liked the two amateur sleuths, one of whom is a member of the aristocracy and the other, a member of the communist party. This made for an interesting, but believable partnership.
  I would have given this 5 stars, but the ending is weak compared to the rest of the book, and the beginning a bit slow, so that cost Mr Roberts the fifth star. However, despite those flaws, I still think this merits 4 stars, maybe even 4.5 (if I could award half a star). I've already got the next in the series and I expect I shall be getting the others.
• 
  Mary Kay Kare

  I can't believe I read the same book as some of the really negative reviewers! I quite liked the book, though the ending was muddled & disappointing.
  
  It's really a psychological novel with a murder thrown in. The author is exploring some of the cliche figures of the 30s mystery and how they came to be what the are. I particularly enjoyed her portrait of the general.
  
  Exploring people's inner lives, what makes them who they are, their backstory is not interesting to everyone I guess, and, to be fair, it does make for a slow moving book. I enjoyed getting to know the interesting cast of characters, but I do wonder how the author is going to resolve the tension between Verity & Edward without doing violence to their characters.
  
  I'm certainly going to read more of these.
• 
  Gerry

  Lord Edward Corinth meets Verity Browne and an unlikely pairing of amateur sleuths is formed. In this, their first escapade, the plot is a little slow moving and laboured to begin with but is saved by the 1920s/30s setting. It blossoms later on and a surprising development gives it a good boost and leaves the reader wanting more of Corinth and Browne, who at the conclusion has surprisingly gone overseas to leave Lord Edward alone. Their relationship is somewhat beguiling so it will interesting to see how it develops in later tales.
• 
  Verity W

  An interesting read, with a solution that I didn't guess, which kicks off a series. Both the leading characters are interesting - Lord Edward owes a debt to Lord Peter Wimsey - although Edward was too young to serve in the war (and consequently doesn't have Peter's "combination of nerves and nose"). I'm still trying to figure Verity out - she's quite abrasive and difficult to like at times, but it makes for an interesting dynamic between the two of them. I'll definitely be reading more in the series.
• 
  Katie

  I was hoping this would be a series I could get into (Edward Corinth is quite a bit like Peter Whimsey) but most of the characters rubbed me the wrong way by making really bad decisions, involving themselves in unhealthy and illogical relationships, and being inexplicably dedicated to the wrong people. And there are lots of preachy Communists, most of whom have way too much time and money on their hands. No thank you.
• 
  Carol Kerry-Green

  Thought I'd start with the first of a series for a change:-) A bit slow to get going, but I thought the vignettes on each of the characters were well done and as Lord Edward and Verity got to know one another they complemented each other's detecting style. Not sure what will happen next as at end of this book Verity off to Spain to be war correspondent and Edward off to New York - will just have to wait until next book arrives from the library.
  
  Raiting clarification 3.5 stars
• 
  Fran

  I enjoyed this historical mystery set in the 1930's in England. Interesting premise for the two protagonists--one from the aristocracy and one from the upper middle class who decided she was a communist, as did a number of intellectuals in the 1930's. I believe David Roberts will become more smooth in his subsequent novels (he has written nine with these characters as the mystery solvers.
• 
  Susan

  guys can't write cozies. this is a collection of wooden stock characters assembled by the numbers from the hoping-for-a-masterpiece-theater-sale British Mystery Book Kit. I almost always finish books just in case the author redeems him/herself at the last minute (exceptions: see my avoid-at-all-costs shelf)so I soldier on.
  
  Nope, no redemption.