Sweet Poison

Lord Edward Corinth & Verity Browne #1

by David Roberts

It is August 1935 and the Duke of Mersham is hosting one of his influential parties, bringing together public figures interested in improving Anglo-German relations. One of his guests is General Sir Alistair Craig VC, who swallows poison in the duke's excellent port and dies just as latecomer Lord Edward Corinth and journalist Verity Browne arrive on the scene. The unlikely pair - the younger son of a duke and a journalist committed to the Communist Party find common ground as they seek for the truth behind the genera's murder and discover that everyone present - including the duke himself - had a motive for wanting Sir Alistair out of the way. First published in hardback in 2000, this classic detective story introducing Lord Edward Corinth and Verity Browne was much acclaimed.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Historical Mystery, Historical, Historical Fiction, Detective

277 pages, Paperback

First published January 19, 2001

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
David Roberts is an English editor and novelist.
Roberts worked for several years as a book editor at Chatto and Windus, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, and Michael O'Mara Books. Since 2000 he has been a full-time writer, best known for a series of crime novels set during the late 1930s, and featuring the joint adventures of Lord Edward Corinth and Verity Browne. The novels use actual historical events as a backdrop and there is an Author's Note at the back of the books briefly outlining what happened to the historical characters subsequently.
Publishers Weekly has described his novels as "well-researched" and "first-rate fun".

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lord Edward Corinth, a respectable dare-devil, and Miss Verity Browne, a Communist journalist, join forces to solve the murder of a general at a Duke's home. Set in 1935 Britain, it has the atmosphere of a cosy country house murder mystery. Some of the characters are likable, but I found they ran a bit much to type. You have the opinionated, bully of a Scotland Yard officer who seems incapable of solving the simplest of crimes. Loyal servants, an elderly doctor, obnoxious politicians, spoiled rich girls, a handful of drug dealers. With the exception of Lord Edward, his brother the Duke, the Duke's wife Connie, and several servants, the characters are all rather hard to like. The book felt to me like it was trying too hard. Verity Browne finds herself attracted to Edward and as a result is rude and abrasive towards him which becomes annoying rather quickly. Neither Edward or Verity do much detecting, they bumble about and luck into information. Also, a pet is brutally murdered, and I hate books where there is violence towards animals, and in this situation I'm sure something else would have suitably shown the evilness of the villains. Might later books in the series be an improvement? Possibly, but I'm not sure I will bother with them.

[Karen Blackburn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sweet Poison by David Roberts

Book One of the Lord Edward Corinth and Verity Browne Series


This is a book which owes more to Dorothy Sayers and Lord Peter Wimsey than to any other writer and as someone who has read all the books in that series it was a real pleasure to read another that has similar values. Like Lord Peter, Lord Edward Corinth is a younger son of a Duke, although in this case there was an elder brother who died in a war for which Lord Edward was much to young to serve. Again, like Lord Peter, Lord Edward is at home talking to people outside of his own group as those in it, has a hidden intelligence masked by a vein of indifference and boredom. Unlike Lord Peter, Lord Edward has spent much time in other parts of the world, especially Africa, meeting the local tribesmen and learning much that would be of use to him later in life. Upon returning he is bored by the endless social rounds but, again like Lord Peter, has an interest in cricket to help keep boredom and sloth at a reasonable distance.

It starts when he is asked at the last minute to make up the numbers at a dinner party. His brother is determined that there should never again be a war like the last and is hoping that by keeping open the channels of communication between Germany, France and England, and including the pacifists in the talks war can be avoided. The book is set in a time when Hitler has just taken over as Chancellor of Germany and is now called the Fuhrer, the communist party is popular with the young, and not so young, actively encouraged by Stalin and civil war in Spain is looking likely with hopes that it will be the first country to vote in a communist government. One of the guests is a longstanding family friend, who commanded the regiment, in which the then heir to the Dukedom served/led, and which suffered huge losses leading to the deaths of the majority of men. He is strongly of the opinion that talking is useless and war is inevitable. Another guest is a bishop who is the exact opposite and is fiercely against the idea of another war with all its heartbreak and death. The last really controversial guest is an influential German diplomat, though not the ambassador. While none of the other guests can be said to be free of controversy it is these thee who are the most important and It is against this backdrop that the story is set.

Lord Edward starts off by running late, the result of a cricket match that didn't go according to plan, and then while speeding to try and arrive in time for dinner manages to put his car, a Lagonda, in a ditch while giving himself a number of injuries. As a result he meets up with Verity Browne (and of course the name Verity itself means truth) who is on her way to the castle for a totally different reason and under false pretences. Giving him a lift they both arrive late and it is the distraction caused by their late arrival that gives cover for the death. Equally though, it is the presence of Lord Edward that could be said to have alerted those present to the fact that the death may not have been natural, something Lord Edward attributes to his time in Africa and snakebite.

It could truly be said that almost everyone present had a motive, all very diverse and some very well hidden while others are more in the open. It is a shared desire for justice that brings Lord Edward and Verity together in a hunt for the truth. Even though the victim was elderly, already dying, was possibly involved in the deliberate and needless deaths of enemy soldiers during the war, and was considered to be a warmonger whose hatred of a former enemy could be considered an impediment to the peace effort they couldn't allow a possible injustice to go unavenged.

There are many effective red herrings and a sub plot, or two, which are explained fully at the end, and while they have an often rocky partnership, especially as one is a member of the aristocracy and the other a committed member of the communist party, together they find what they, and the police, think to be the truth. It is only after Verity leaves for Spain that Lord Edward suddenly realises what really happened and who did what, and succeeds in obtaining a confession although he is genuinely confounded by the reason why and the unfeeling excuses given. Not only is Lord Edward left with the guilt from the confession and its inevitable result but the grief felt by the person closest to the victim takes its toll as well.

Lord Edward, like Lord Peter, is genuinely comfortable with people outside of his own class and has no problems with working equally with a woman nor any problems with her political beliefs. The characters are well rounded, three dimensional and utterly believable, and equally believable is the authenticity of the background, both of the time in which the book is set and the past scenes used to explain the present. It has been a long time coming and a true successor to Lord Peter Wimsey and Dorothy Sayers is well overdue. A masterpiece of storytelling which will hopefully take its place in the list of books which should feature on all reading lists.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

1935 At a dinner party hosted by the Duke of Mersham a death occurs at the post night drinks. But by whom and why.
Very little mystery, and an unlikeable wealthy Verity Browne who onstantly has to inform us that she is a member of the Communist Party.

[Jenine · Rating 2 out of 5]

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 · Rating 1 out of 5]

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.

[Bev · Rating 4 out of 5]

August 1935, in the shadow of the coming world war. Gerald, the Duke of Mersham is one of many British aristocrats who are are trying to fend off another blood bath by bringing together influential men who might help improve the relations between Britain and Germany. He has planned a dinner with Lord Weaver, a newspaper tycoon (with his wife and stepdaughter); General Sir Alistair Craig, a distinguished retired soldier; Peter Lamore, a rising politician (and wife); Cecil Haycraft, the Bishop of Worthing and a loud supporter of pacifism (and wife); and Baron Helmut von Friedberg of the German Embassy, a man said to have the ear of the new Chancellor Adolf Hitler. The Duke presses his younger brother, Lord Edward Corinth to join the party--to take the place of Hermione Weaver's young man at table. The ill-mannered young cub (Gerald's point of view) has cried off at the last minute.

This type of gathering is the last place Edward wants to be--both because he would rather not be plopped in the middle of the polite bickering sure to result when you mix the general, the pacifist bishop, and the German all together and because he has an important cricket match that same afternoon that he refuses to miss. The cricket match will force him to drive even more rapidly than normal if he's going to be on time. Spoiler--he isn't. After a couple of mishaps, he winds up riding with a Miss Verity Browne, reporter, who is also on her way to Mersham Castle to interview the Duchess the next day for a story. The two arrive at the castle just in time for a late supper (the guests are long done), port...and to watch General Craig die from a dose of cyanide in his glass.

When it's learned that Craig had inoperable cancer, there is a suspicion of suicide--though why choose the Duke's dinner party to do it? But the general consensus (even by the police) is that it will be chalked up as an accident at the inquest...unless further evidence is found to suggest otherwise. Neither Edward nor his new-found partner in detection, Verity Browe (a Communist of all things!) believe it to be suicide or accident. Which leaves murder? But who would want to murder Craig? He hadn't met most of the guests before. Or had he? The further the two dig, the more motives they find. But no proof whatsoever. There will be a few more deaths before the unlikely duo discover the truth behind Craig's death.

I read several of this series back when they first came out and I was struck then by how many parallels there are to the Lord Peter Wimsey books. At the time I was delighted to find a similar aristocratic sleuth because I'd read all the LPW stories there were and was wishing for more. I deliberately started reading this one this year with that in mind and wanted to see just how closely Corinth mirrored Wimsey. A quote from Poisoned Pen on the back cover of my edition says: "Roberts is convincing on period detail and crafts prickly characters...while in fact the period parallels Dorothy L. Sayers, Roberts goes his own way...." Okay, can we talk about that? Here's what I've got when I tally things up:

Like LPW, Lord Edward Corinth is the younger brother of a Duke named...Gerald. Gerald doesn't understand his younger brother and thinks he's a bit of a harum-scarum. [Fortunately, for LEC, the Duke of Mersham's wife isn't nearly the pain in the you-know-what that LPW's sister-in-law is.] LEC also loves to drive fast--though not as well as a LPW. From all reports, he's more like LPW's accident-prone nephew Lord St. George. But he does have the same proficiency at cricket--managing to bat "not out one hundred and five" (whatever that means in cricketese). LEC also has a friend who provides him an entry into bohemian/Communist party society where monkey glands are discussed.

LEC loves to throw a quotation or two around and uses a deceptively flippant nature to disguise his intelligence. And his man Fenton, like Bunter in the filmed version of Five Red Herrings, makes claim to be an amateur painter. LEC and Verity Brown have an uneasy relationship--based on differences in politics rather than the burden of gratitude that haunts Harriet Vane. And like Harriet in Have His Carcase, Verity attempts to vamp one of the major suspects.

The end of the story mirrors two of LPW's novels. Verity leaves LEC, not to go on a walking tour as Harriet does from Strong Poison into Carcase, but to report what's going on in Spain. LEC feels the need to leave England on a holiday just as LPW does between Whose Body? and Clouds of Witness. I'm sure I've missed several more. But you get the idea. From what I can tell, Roberts has tried to shove as many parallels to LPW into this first LEC chronicle as he could.

But...what about the mystery? There's lots to like--lots of suspects; lots of red herrings; lots of motives. Our sleuths even have to wade through the question of whether the right person got poisoned. There's also a few quibbles--LEC and Verity don't really do heaps of detecting. They luck into a few clues, but track down fewer. The culprit is a fairly nasty piece of work and there is a pointless bit of animal cruelty thrown in. On the balance, though, this is a solid opening for LEC and I did enjoy revisiting a world and characters very similar to those of Sayers. ★★★ and 1/2 [rounded up here]

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block.

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's 1935 and the Duke of Mersham and his wife Connie have invited a select group of men to stay at Mersham Castle with the aim of reaching some kind of accord about the relationship between Germany and the UK. He has invited Lord Weaver, the press baron, together with his wife Blanche and daughter Hermione, war veteran General Sir Alistair Craig VC, an up-and-coming conservative MP Peter Larmore and his wife Celia, peace campaigner Bishop Cecil Haycroft and his wife Honoria, and the new under secretary at the German Embassy Baron Helmut von Friedberg.

To occupy the petulant Honoria, whose paramour Charlie Lomax declined an invitation at the last minute, the Duke has strong-armed his younger brother, Lord Edward Corinth to come down for dinner. Edward may look like a typical feckless aristocrat, more money than sense, but in fact he has a keen brain and loves to test himself physically.

On the way down, running late and consequently driving too fast, Edward crashes his car and is rescued by a journalist, Verity Browne, who claims to be from Country Life, writing a series on English castles. Grateful for her assistance, Edward invites Verity to spend the night at the Castle rather than in the nearby hotel. However, shortly after their arrival, as Verity is entertaining everyone with the tale of their meet-cute, the General suddenly starts choking and dies at the table. While all the other guests are sure he has had a heart attack, Edward and Verity aren't so sure, Edward thinks it bears all the hallmarks of cyanide poisoning - something the doctor subsequently confirms.

Eager to avoid publicity, everyone, including the police plays down the death, suggesting the General may have committed suicide, or perhaps mistaken his old army cyanide pill for the painkillers he was taking. But unconvinced Verity and Edward join forces, despite him discovering that she is actually a member of the Communist Party and a journalist for the Daily Worker.

As other reviews have said, Edward bears a resemblance to Lord Peter Wimsey (right down to the apartment in Albany), although Verity is more like some of the characters Lord Peter encounters on some of his adventures.

I did enjoy this, perhaps marred slightly for me by a brutal event close to the end - I understand its purpose etc but it did upset me a little (reading late at night). Otherwise, I am interested to see where this will go and have already downloaded the second book.

Also, I really like the new covers - definitely a factor in my decision to download the book - pity they aren't showing on Goodreads.

Read on my Kindle Unlimited subscription.

[Chrystyna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sweet Poison by David Roberts - Mixed feelings but mostly good

This should have been just my cup of tea. A cosy, vintage style, murder set in the 1930s but written this century. And it is, excepting an unpleasant incident towards the end of the book. Whilst I found it unnecessary it didn't upset me, but has prevented me recommending it to folk that should have liked it but I know could be upset.

Anyway, set in 1935 in the proverbial country house, the Duke of Mersham has gathered various leading lights and an 'ambassador' from Nazi Germany to talk about Anglo-German relations and try to stop another war. As they pass the port, they are interrupted by the late arrival of the Duke's younger brother, Edward, and a female journalist by the name of Verity Browne. Returning to their drinks, one of the assembly drinks his port and dies! Poison!

Of course, everyone has a motive. It's down to Lord Edward and Verity to turn sleuth and solve the murder.

As I said, it would have been a good read excepting a misjudged incident near the end of the book. Will give the second in the series a go sometime and see if it redeems itself.

[Katie Bee · Rating 1 out of 5]

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 · Rating 2 out of 5]

(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.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. I was initially suspicious of this book because of the cover, which played up its “swanky thirties” side. There are a raft of historical mysteries being published these days that take place in the 1920s and 1930s and focus on the upper classes, inviting us to wallow in fake Hollywood glamor. They are also, like so many “cozy” mysteries these days, badly written.

Happily, I was wrong. Yes, one of the sleuthing pair is an aristocrat, but the other is a committed Communist, and the Nazi threat (this takes place in 1935) permeates the book. And it is well-written. The budding romance between philosophical opposites is nicely calibrated, and the female half of the duo is smart, lively, and ambitious. I’m looking forward to reading the nine books that follow this one in the series.

[Toast · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought I'd hit on something here - a classic murder mystery set in the 1930s. There is much to enjoy however...... You knew that was coming didn't you? Somehow the plot just didn't ring true. I'm not saying drugs, the seedy world of pushers, gangsters etc didn't exist in the '30s (The Great Gatsby, Vile Bodies....), its the way it is written about here, the approach, the language it just doesn't sound right somehow. I don't believe Lomax, his grimy squat, the Captain, The Cocoanut Grove nor Hermione. It tips too into the 60s and 70s for this girl.
Thinking about it, not for me.
Toast

[Denise Mullins · Rating 1 out of 5]

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 · Rating 1 out of 5]

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

[Suzanne Brett · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book was a slow to pick up momentum. Got interesting in the last few chapters. Have got a copy of the 2nd in the series will see if it gets better.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

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

[Kathryn Baron · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not badly written, but I just didn't care for it at all. Not the characters (annoying) or the plot. I had a lot of issues with almost everyone's motivations.

[Louise · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much discussion, not enough action

The proper address for a duke is your grace. I was surprised what the author didn’t get right. These things can easil6 be referenced.

[Marie-Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Plays just before WWII

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too depressing and realistic for me. Also the solution seemed a bit random.

[Jenny Wenham · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Sue · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unsatisfying resolution. I'm a naive enough reader of mysteries to want some justice at the end. This didn't have that....

[Voirrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I began reading I realised I had read this before - but don't seem to have listed it, so probably not long after it was published. It was an enjoyable re-read.

[Peter Slaughter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice little cozy mystery in the Agatha Christie mould.

[JJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a good read with lots of period detail (lots) especially between the titled (who seemed decent coves mainly) and the burgeoning Communists (apart from Verity, a bit annoying). Not so much detecting going on but an interesting story of the times.

[JackieB · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Katherine · Rating 1 out of 5]

The only reason I finished this book was out of curiosity -- I wanted to know how badly it was finished up. A good mystery novel will scatter clues throughout the book. In this book, the solution came as a complete surprise because there weren't any clues at all about who killed the General. The characters aren't very plausible. Verity, the heroine is a full-fledged communist from a wealthy family. Communist philosophy and propaganda is terribly boring, and a character who spouts it (like Verity) must either appear as an object of satire or in small doses in order to avoid annoying the reader. Neither applies to this novel. The character of Lord Edward Corinth isn't very compelling either -- just another aristocrat who's brilliant at solving mysteries, though that type of brilliance is not evident in other aspects of his life. Aside from the two main characters, the novel is stocked with cardboard cutouts. And then there's the talk of "dope" and "dope-peddlers". I suppose people may have talked like that at some point in time, but it reads as more stilted than the dialogue in Reefer Madness.

[Mary Kay Kare · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read nearly all David Roberts books (Lord Edward Corinth and Verity Browne) I really enjoy them. They all feature real people from history intermingled with Lord Edward & Verity Browne and whichever mystery they are investigating. He describes the era brilliantly from the clothes, to the food, the historic houses, london nighlife etc. Because of the mix with real historical people and events it brings the stories to life. I only have one more of his books to read and I've read the whole series I will be sorry to finish them I would recommend them to anyone who enjoys mysterys or anyone who enjoys 20th century history.