The Poison Pool

by Patricia Hall

When an elderly man dies and a retarded youth is charged with the murder, the resulting investigation reaches into the heart of their small English community and all the way to the highest levels of government.

250 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Patricia Hall is the pen-name of journalist Maureen O'Connor. She was born and brought up in West Yorkshire, which is where she has chosen to set her acclaimed series of novels featuring reporter Laura Ackroyd and DCI Michael Thackeray. She is married, with two grown-up sons, and now lives in Oxford.

Reviews

[Alonzo Church · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the quoted reviews notes this was an “auspicious” debut, and I will go along with that. The book starts well, with a nice tension between the expected cozy setting, and a “corrupt town” plot line that comes from USA pulp fiction, with a liberal dollop of U.K. class consciousness. The boy hero is a cop on the fast track to promotion, who comes from the laboring classes and so is in constant friction with his snooty status conscious wife who comes from money. The girl hero is a conscientious social worker who loves our hero with a very British suppressed passion, and who just knows that the mentally challenged lad our hero just arrested for murder didn't do it. The town, a Yorkshire industrial center in decline, seems quiet, but both social conflict and an environmental catastrophe boils underneath.

However, every thriller must have a plot, and when this one kicks into full gear in the second half of the novel, it becomes a rather overcooked evil corporation affair, and the interesting background fades away as the killings, attempted killings, hero-framing, and hero private life problems take over the narrative. The result is good for the beach or the rapid transit, and suggestive of better things to come. But the better things are mostly excluded from these pages.

[Andy Plonka · Rating 3 out of 5]

You have to be willing to employ your willing suspension of disbelief on this one (many coincidences )
but an interesting story.

[NK · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall I liked this book. The British phrases sometimes threw me but I was able to figure out most of it because I watch too much PBS.

There is a softness in the writing, proving that it is not necessary to use harsh words (i.e. the use of "effing" instead of the obvious).

[Jackie Simons]

Read 2/99

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: when a man dies and a retarded youth is charged with murder, the investigation reaches into the heart of an English community.

[Peggy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I gave up on page 40.