The Poisonous Solicitor

<p><b>'METICULOUSLY RESEARCHED ... A GLORIOUSLY ENGAGING ROMP' JANICE HALLETT, <i>THE SUNDAY TIMES</i></b><br><b><br>'IMMERSIVE AND COMPELLING' DAVID KYNASTON</b><br><br><b>'A PAGE-TURNER' ROBERT LACEY</b><br><br><b>'CAREFUL AND COMPELLING' KATE MORGAN</b><br><br><b>'YOU WILL READ IT IN ONE SITTING' MARC MULHOLLAND</b><br><br><b>'A REAL-LIFE GOLDEN-AGE CRIME NOVEL' SEAN O'CONNOR</b><br><b><br><br><i>A brilliant narrative investigation into the 1920s case that inspired Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and Margery Allingham.</i></b><br><br>On a bleak Tuesday morning in February 1921, 48-year-old Katharine Armstrong died in her bedroom on the first floor of an imposing Edwardian villa overlooking the rolling hills of the isolated borderlands between Wales and England.<br><br>Within fifteen months of such a sad domestic tragedy, her husband, Herbert Rowse Armstrong, would be arrested, tried and hanged for poisoning her with arsenic, the only solicitor ever to be executed in England.<br><br>Armstrong's story was retold again and again, decade after decade, in a thousand newspaper articles across the world, and may have also inspired the new breed of popular detective writers seeking to create a cunning criminal at the centre of their thrillers.<br><br>With all the ingredients of a classic murder mystery, the case is a near-perfect whodunnit. But who, in fact, did it? Was Armstrong really a murderer?<br><br>One hundred years after the execution, Agatha-Award shortlisted Stephen Bates examines and retells the story of the case, evoking the period and atmosphere of the early 1920s, and questioning the fatal judgement.</p> <p><b>SHORTLISTED FOR THE ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION</b><br><b><br>'METICULOUSLY RESEARCHED ... A GLORIOUSLY ENGAGING ROMP' JANICE HALLETT, <i>THE SUNDAY TIMES</i></b><br><b><br>'IMMERSIVE AND COMPELLING' DAVID KYNASTON</b><br><br><b>'A PAGE-TURNER' ROBERT LACEY</b><br><br><b>'CAREFUL AND COMPELLING' KATE MORGAN</b><br><br><b>'YOU WILL READ IT IN ONE SITTING' MARC MULHOLLAND</b><br><br><b>'A REAL-LIFE GOLDEN-AGE CRIME NOVEL' SEAN O'CONNOR</b><br><b><br><br><i>A brilliant narrative investigation into the 1920s case that inspired Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and Margery Allingham.</i></b><br><br>On a bleak Tuesday morning in February 1921, 48-year-old Katharine Armstrong died in her bedroom on the first floor of an imposing Edwardian villa overlooking the rolling hills of the isolated borderlands between Wales and England.<br><br>Within fifteen months of such a sad domestic tragedy, her husband, Herbert Rowse Armstrong, would be arrested, tried and hanged for poisoning her with arsenic, the only solicitor ever to be executed in England.<br><br>Armstrong's story was retold again and again, decade after decade, in a thousand newspaper articles across the world, and may have also inspired the new breed of popular detective writers seeking to create a cunning criminal at the centre of their thrillers.<br><br>With all the ingredients of a classic murder mystery, the case is a near-perfect whodunnit. But who, in fact, did it? Was Armstrong really a murderer?<br><br>One hundred years after the execution, Agatha-Award shortlisted Stephen Bates examines and retells the story of the case, evoking the period and atmosphere of the early 1920s, and questioning the fatal judgement.</p>