Tahiti, also called Otaheite, has been the land of dreams
for many sailors since the voyage of 1769. A new voyage has
now returned in 1812 from that same land, this time with a
ship full of botanical cuttings and seedlings.
Unfortunately, something has gone seriously awry since the
Solander returned to shore and now sailors are turning up
dead. Thames River Police Chief Charles Horton is determined
to find out what is killing the sailors,
THE POISONED ISLAND is the second book featuring Charles
Horton and is definitely a standalone novel, as I haven't
read the first book, The English Monster. However, some of
the relationships and politics between the various
characters and police units seem to have already been
established in the first book. It took me awhile to get
caught up on some of the more subtle issues between the
various factions. I would also suggest that anyone
unfamiliar with some of the history at that time do a little
research as Lloyd Shepherd seamlessly blends together the
historical with the mystical. The richness of the tale will
be better appreciated if the reader has a sense of the time
period the book is set in, particularly the Ratcliffe
Highway Murders.
Lloyd Shepherd's lyrical prose makes the flow of THE
POISONED ISLAND seem beautiful, even amidst the deaths and
gritty details of the murders. Some of his phrases are so
poetical that I had to stop and savor them while others are
quite witty for their unexpected and very British humor.
Lloyd Shepherd does a marvelous job at breathing life into
his characters and their worlds. While Charles Horton is the
main character of the tale, the secondary characters are so
well developed that I wanted to keep reading about them even
as I wondered how the various threads of the tale would be
resolved by Charles Horton. THE POISONED ISLAND is a
thoughtful, lyrical historical thriller that keeps the
reader guessing until the very last page is turned.
A brilliant young police officer discovers a series of
bizarre deaths are connected to the cargo of a research
vessel bound for Kew Gardens in this fantasy-tinged
historical thriller set in early nineteenth-century London.
London 1812. On a dull, gray June morning, the Solander, a
ship containing breathtaking plants and natural specimens
brought back from Tahiti for the Royal Gardens at Kew,
slowly pulls into dock under the watchful eyes of London
denizens.
The apparently successful expedition soon takes on a horrid—
and inexplicable—turn: the crew of the Solander starts dying
one by one. Thames River Police Chief Charles Horton can
find no signs of murder or suicide to explain the deaths,
and the ship’s surviving crew, which has made a pact to
remain tight-lipped about its voyage, further hampers his
investigation. Meanwhile, one of the specimens begins to
show frightening changes, forcing Horton to wonder just how
“natural” they might be…
Tahiti 1769. English sailors arrive on the shores of the
French Polynesian paradise—a place of breathtaking natural
beauty where magic and ancient myths are alive and well. The
island nirvana, however, soon starts to disintegrate as the
explorers devastate the land with disease, death, and war.
But what they carry back with them aboard the Solander fifty
years later is far deadlier—and it is in the hands of
Charles Horton to determine exactly what it is and how it
might be stopped
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