The Poison Principle

Second-Hand

Lovely note inside cover, otherwise excellent condition

When Dr William Macbeth poisoned two of his sons in 1927, his wife and sister hid the murders in the private realm of family secrets. Like the famous poisoner Dr Crippen, Macbeth behaved as if he were immune to consequences; unlike Crippen, however, he avoided detection. Or did he?

Secrets can be as corrosive as poison, and as time passed the story of Dr William Macbeth haunted and divided his descendants. Macbeth's 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 and elegant, this is a book about family secrets and literary poisonings. It is a meditation on death, deceit and language, and finally, it answers the question of what really happened to those two small boys in the winter of 1927.