When Dr William Macbeth poisoned two of his sons in1927, his wife and sister hid the murders in the intensely private realm of family secrets. Macbeth behaved as if he were immune to consequences and avoided detection and punishment.
Or did he? Secrets can be as corrosive as poison, and as time passed, the story of Macbeth haunted and divided his descendants. His grand-daughter, Gail Bell, spent ten years reading the literature of poisoning in order to understand Macbeth’s life. Herself a chemist, she listened for echoes in the great cases of the nineteenth century, in myths, fiction, and poison lore.
Intricate, elegant, and beautifully realised, The Poison Principle is a book about family secrets and literary poisonings.
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The Poison Principle is a captivating detective story that combines biography and the scientific exploration of poison and its history. Gail Bell trained as a chemist and was fascinated with the dark family secret that her grandfather murdered two of his young sons by poisoning before her own father was born. In an attempt to discover the truth, Bell not only painstakingly examines all the evidence available in regards to her own family narrative but also sheds light on historical poisoners and the the physical plight of their victims. The scientific language was new to me but instead of being dry it drew me in until the final, moving twist in her own tale. - Nola (QBD)
Guest, 02/10/2017
