The Poison Tree

Erin Kelly

The Poison Tree

It is the sweltering summer of 1997, and Karen is a strait-laced, straight-A university student. When she meets the impossibly glamorous Biba, a bohemian orphan who lives in a crumbling old mansion in Highgate with her enigmatic brother Rex, she is soon drawn into their world – but something terrible is about to happen, and someone's going to end up dead... 4.1 out of 5 based on 4 reviews
The Poison Tree

Omniscore:

Classification Fiction
Genre Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Format Hardback
Pages 352
RRP £12.99
Date of Publication June 2010
ISBN 978-1444701036
Publisher Hodder & Stoughton
 

It is the sweltering summer of 1997, and Karen is a strait-laced, straight-A university student. When she meets the impossibly glamorous Biba, a bohemian orphan who lives in a crumbling old mansion in Highgate with her enigmatic brother Rex, she is soon drawn into their world – but something terrible is about to happen, and someone's going to end up dead...

Reviews

The Times

Peter Millar

...a beautifully crafted, evocative psychological thriller that oozes Englishness and is all the better for it… A dark, poetic, gripping, totally brilliant Brideshead Revisited for the 21st century.

19/06/2010

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The Daily Telegraph

Jeremy Jehu

Erin Kelly’s gravely elegant style masks an arch talent for misdirection that allows her to spring several satisfyingly long-fused surprise even if she does stray into credibility-stretching melodrama when there’s murder to be done.

16/06/2010

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The Financial Times

Christopher Fowler

The spirit of Daphne Du Maurier hangs heavily over Kelly’s debut novel, from the gloomy old Highgate house where the heroine is lured to the unnerving, claustrophobic denouement. A taut chamber-piece of psychological suspense.

25/06/2010

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The Literary Review

Jessica Mann

It's hard to be sure whether readers are expected to love [Biba] or be repelled by her … But the writing is good enough (apart from a few grammatical howlers) to make one suspend incredulity … An enjoyable excursion into territory first colonised by Barbara Vine.

01/06/2010

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