Sweet Poison

by Mary Fitt

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 198
Rating:

Synopsis:

Sweet Poison takes its title from a line in King John: "Sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age's tooth". It refers not only to the fact that the central character dies of poison, thought to be self-administered, but also to the fact that this character is a man obsessed with the past.

Augustus Gale was a man in love - in love with a woman of genius who had been dead for over a century. This macabre devotion poisoned both his own life and the lives of those around him: his son and daughter, his beautiful second wife, and even his devoted mother. Yet it was a strictly confined obsession, and when a party of archaeologists sought permission to excavate a Roman mosaic pavement on Augustus's land, they were met with blunt and contemptuous refusal. It might be said that Augustus Gale was a man who deserved to die, but if so, whose was the hand that killed him and with what motive?

I’ve been eager to read more of Mary Fitt’s work for a while, after really enjoying The Banquet Ceases, so I was glad to see a bunch on Kobo Plus. Sweet Poison appealed because it’s set on an archaeological dig, and the archaeological conundrum (a mosaic which passes below a boundary wall and into a private estate) offers one potential motive for the murder that follows.

I must admit, so far The Banquet Ceases has been my favourite; in both Strong Poison and Clues to Christabel, the female characters were almost universally offputting — in retrospect, there’s a similar problem in The Banquet Ceases, except that the main character’s wife is alright, and I hadn’t read enough of Fitt’s work to see a pattern yet. It’s not that the male characters are perfectly likeable either, but there’s something unhinged about most of her female characters in a way that’s starting to feel a bit samey to me — and though Dulcibella is level-headed and cares deeply about her children, and could be an interesting character given room to shine, her main object is escape and once that’s attained, she quickly discards Roger and exits the story. We see more of Cornelia, and, well…

Fitt did a pretty great job of setting up an atmosphere, in part because of that growing unease about the sanity of one of the female characters, and the way it all worked made sense and hung together well… but, yeah, I’m starting to wonder if Fitt liked women. Which is kind of a funny thing to say about a lesbian writer!

I’m still enjoying her books, and the mix of settings and set-ups for the mysteries, but… yeah. I’m hoping to see her do some more interesting things with her female characters.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)