Poison Tree [Paperback]

Tony Strong (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1998

In the wake of a failed marriage and a misguided love affair, feisty academic Terry Williams moves to Oxford to resume her abandoned doctorate in detective fiction. But her new home was previously the scene of a savage sexual murder, and Terry soon finds the past returning to invade the present.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Sex, murder, and academics are the strange bedfellows in The Poison Tree, a first novel by Tony Strong. Set in Oxford, where protagonist Terry Williams has come to get a doctorate in detective fiction, the story revolves around crimes committed before Terry's arrival, namely a horrifying murder that occurred in the very house into which she has moved. Soon history seems to be repeating itself: poison-pen letters start arriving, a murderous stalker roams the streets, and Terry begins to uncover the ugly secrets that lie just beneath the surface of Oxford's seemingly idyllic environment. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Kirkus Reviews

Fleeing her divorce and the lesbian affair it's tumbled her into, ad executive Theresa Williams returns to Oxford to pick up her postgraduate work in detective fiction. But the house she purchases was the site of a grisly murder--undergrad Hugh Scott was burned to death by a soldering iron--whose consequences keep spreading like a contagion. Someone is still prowling the streets of Oxford raping and killing young men. Ensconced in her new home, Terry can't even plaster her bathroom wall without being visited, in rapid succession, by Emily Harris, Hugh's undergraduate lover; Carla Eden, a neighboring don's wife who'd also taken Hugh to bed, and is willing to do the same with Terry; Giles Chawker, a narcissistic stalwart of the Oxford crew equally intent on seducing Terry; Julia Van Glught, whose marriage to a children's-book author hasn't kept her away from Carla's husband Brian; and Brian Eden himself, the magnetic biographer Terry becomes rapidly convinced was Hugh's killer. When her rehabbing uncovers a cache of floridly pornographic letters, Terry's driven to put her interpretive skills to work, since le style, c'est l'homme. The punishing rounds of stylistic analysis that follow will drive a wedge between Terry and her latest lover, the police inspector in charge of the case, before finally revealing the whole sordid plot. Even more brutally than recent work by Peter Robinson and Ruth Rendell, Strong's debut mocks the age-old distinction between cozy and nasty, producing the lowest revelations about higher education you've ever seen. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (May 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553505424
• ISBN-13: 978-0553505429
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,193,003 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing and disgusting., April 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Poison Tree (Hardcover)

I read Strong's second novel The Death Pit before I started The Poison Tree and I really liked it. And I'll admit that at first I liked this one as well.

I read it with interest right up until the big climactic scene when the whole plot fell apart. The solution made very little sense to me- it almost seemed as though the author had just tacked it on at the last minute to have an ending- any ending! That leads to a thoroughly disgusting and nauseating spate of animal cruelty that I find unforgivable. The author seems to be hoping that these atrocities will make the reader forget that the so-called solution to his mystery was ludicrous and wholly unbelievable. It didn't work- I was so furious by the end that I vowed never to read anything else by Mr. Strong. That's unfortunate because as I stated before, I did like The Death Pit. Makes me wish that I'd never looked for The Poison Tree.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Thoroughly and disappointly awful, June 27, 2000

By 

Suzanne (Peachtree City, Georgia USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Poison Tree (Mass Market Paperback)

The plot line of this book had such potential, which is what kept me reading past the first few chapters. I very much identified, however, with the main character's students, who were falling asleep during her lectures.

The grotesque and the sexually explicit does not bother me very much when I am reading a good book. This was not a good book. It was oh-so-obvious that this was written by a man, and one who really doesn't know women at that.

The most unnecessary part of the whole book was the epilogue. It added nothing to the storyline and leaves the reader with only negative feelings towards the book as a whole.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Little to like, January 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Poison Tree (Mass Market Paperback)

This is less mystery than thriller, and it's not very thrilling. I found the characters neither interesting nor likeable, and prefer criminals to have some motivation other than psychosis. One book jacket blurb says something like "the classic English mystery meets the American thriller;" if so, the classic English mystery is badly beaten and raped in the encounter. Even the sexual relations seem to lack plausibility. I think that Tony Strong relies a little too much on brutality against a cat and various people, and too much on the coarse titilation of fantasy sex letters, instead of creating convincing motivation.