Before the Poison

by Peter Robinson

Robinson is famous for his mysteries featuring Inspector Banks.  This book is a departure from the Banks series.  It is the story of a composer who writes scores for movies who has bought a house in England.  He was born in England and his family moved to the US when he was a child.  He has decided to move back to England after his wife died of cancer.

He hadn't seen the house he bought, before he purchased it, and is surprised at how large it is.  He is also surprised to learn that there was a murder in the house.  The wife of a previous owner, a Doctor, was hung for having murdered her husband in the house in the 1950's.  The man is intrigued by this partly because he now owns the house and because the prison she was hung in was next door to the school he attended as a boy.

He becomes intrigued by the story and wonders if she was really a murderer.  Is he seeing her ghost in the house?  He finds out that the woman served as a nurse during the war.  He then sets out to find out as much as he can about her, talking to locals who knew her and her family, meeting her former lover (in Paris)and another young man who knew her (in South Africa).  He eventually finds out what happened to her son who was orphaned after the death of his father and hanging of his mother.  He is able to provide answers to the woman's Granddaughter who shows up at the house one day and she assists him in digging out more information.

It is when he locates the second young man that he learns that the woman's husband was going to be involved with experiments with chemical weapons.  After her experience in the war where she saw the effect of chemical experiments, would this drive her to murder her husband.  As the book ends we find another reason why the composer was so intrigued with exploring whether the woman did kill her husband, he gave his wife morphine to put her out of her pain.

I have enjoyed Robinson's Banks novels but I think this was much better than all his Banks books.