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ashleylm's review
4.0
Great fun, and one of the most surprising books I've read, and not in the way you might assume (given that it's ostensibly a mystery).
Somehow I thought it would be one of those mid-century modern dry character studies where someone slowly goes mad, or someone ruthlessly murders someone and then tries to escape detection (from their vantage point, like a Highsmith), or there's just this increasing feeling of disquiet and you know something bad's going to happen but it likely won't happen to the last minute ...
Nope, none of that. That's not this book. It feels like this book for almost the first half. That's a lot of book to be leading you in the wrong direction. But be warned: somewhat spare, slightly gloomy, tense characters studies for almost 1/2 the book.
And then, it's like Barbara Cartland or Robertson Davies or Joe Keenan took over and said "that's enough bleak 50s modernism, let's have a bit of fun," and they became Charlotte Armstrong and sent the book on an entirely unexpected trajectory, and kept it up for the last half. I mean, it goes from Scandanavian levels of spare and bleak, to ... rom-com? You can imagine Ralph Fiennes and Rachel McAdams having fun in the film version.
I read the first half slowly and respectfully--I liked it--and then the last half last night around 2:00am-ish, literally couldn't go to sleep 'til I'd finished it. So fun!
(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s). I feel a lot of readers automatically render any book they enjoy 5, but I grade on a curve!
Somehow I thought it would be one of those mid-century modern dry character studies where someone slowly goes mad, or someone ruthlessly murders someone and then tries to escape detection (from their vantage point, like a Highsmith), or there's just this increasing feeling of disquiet and you know something bad's going to happen but it likely won't happen to the last minute ...
Nope, none of that. That's not this book. It feels like this book for almost the first half. That's a lot of book to be leading you in the wrong direction. But be warned: somewhat spare, slightly gloomy, tense characters studies for almost 1/2 the book.
And then, it's like Barbara Cartland or Robertson Davies or Joe Keenan took over and said "that's enough bleak 50s modernism, let's have a bit of fun," and they became Charlotte Armstrong and sent the book on an entirely unexpected trajectory, and kept it up for the last half. I mean, it goes from Scandanavian levels of spare and bleak, to ... rom-com? You can imagine Ralph Fiennes and Rachel McAdams having fun in the film version.
I read the first half slowly and respectfully--I liked it--and then the last half last night around 2:00am-ish, literally couldn't go to sleep 'til I'd finished it. So fun!
(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s). I feel a lot of readers automatically render any book they enjoy 5, but I grade on a curve!
snowbenton's review against another edition
1.0
I don't even know how to classify this book other than "garbage."
bev_reads_mysteries's review against another edition
I have a feeling that I missed a memo somewhere. Or the boat. Or something. When I look at Goodreads, the average rating on Charlotte Armstrong's "mystery" novel A Dram of Poison is 4.04/5 stars. The text reviews that have been given are pretty rave-y. It was the winner of an Edgar for Best Mystery novel of 1957. It's listed by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association as one of their favorite mysteries of the 20th century. And, I'm all, like, um....yeah. Whatever. I mean it's a nice little story about this shy, introspective academic-type who has taught poetry (You'd think I'd be hooked right there--I mean, come on, it's got an academic in it for crying out loud. I love those.) and has been all dependable and reliable and what-not and is now 55 and never been in love and then it happens. He meets the girl....only he doesn't know it yet. He just thinks he's being helpful and marrying her to help her out after her crazy father's death--and she needs someone to take care of her and to give her time to regain her strength and actually eat something, for heaven's sake. So, good, old, dependable Kenneth Gibson is right there to save Rosemary's day--bacon--something.
She blossoms--gets all nice and healthy--and he suddenly notices how lovely she is and....zap! Cupid zings him a good one and he falls in love with his wife. Happy ending, right? And where's the mystery? Ain't got one yet. But that's okay, 'cause we're only half-way done with the book and when you turn two or three pages you'll find the happy couple in hospital. Car accident....on the way home from celebrating Rosemary's blooming health and the beginning of love's middle-aged dream. Ah-ha! You say. Now we're getting down to cases. Somebody's trying kill one or both of them off. There's a secret fortune hidden in Rosemary's crazy father's effects and the secret heir wants it. OR somebody's lusting after the newly-beautiful and radiant girl and wants to bump off ol' reliable. Yeah, no. Just an accident. Really.
Then....Kenneth's sister shows up to take charge while he (who got the brunt of the injuries) recovers. Sis is an amateur psychologist and starts spouting her theories hither and yon and making both Kenneth and Rosemary doubt themselves and their motives and each other. Kenneth is filled with sis's doom and gloom psycho-babble and decides that Rosemary never cared and could never possibly care for a middle-aged, stuffy old academic like himself and decides to kill himself --'cause, that's a logical thing to do, you know. He traipses off to pick up some handy tasteless, do-the-trick-in-a-flash-and-with-no-pain, unnamed poison that his neighbor has conveniently displayed to him way back in chapter one. He dumps it in a bottle of olive oil (the better to slide it down the hatch), stuffs it in a green bag, climbs on a bus......and somewhere along the way manages to lose the darn stuff.
Ah ha! You say again. This is one of those inverted mysteries. You know who the killer is (albeit an unintentional one) and you know how it was done. All we do now is wait for someone to drop dead from tainted olive oil and watch the fun while the cops try to figure out who had it in for Mr./Ms. X. Yeah, no. Nobody dies. There's no mystery as far as I can see.....except the mystery as to why this was categorized as a mystery. And maybe, if you want to stretch a point, you could label it as suspense.....because, after all, you--the reader--are on the edge of your seat wondering when the heck the mystery is going to show up.
Charlotte Armstrong is hit or miss for me. I hated The Chocolate Cobweb; I loved Lay On, MacDuff! I'm just plain at a loss with A Dram of Poison. This book has some really delightful, comic dialogue in the second half--which might have done a lot more for me if I hadn't been searching high and low for a mystery hidden somewhere. I think I might have liked the characters if it had been billed as a straight fiction novel. I'll never know. No rating....I have no idea what I want to give it.
This review is mine and was first posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting any portion. Thanks.
efbeckett's review
2.0
After a rough first chapter that reads like a poor translation, this settles into an intriguing set-up that had me eager to find out where it was heading... Would the husband poison the neighbour who catches his wife's eye? Would the wife and neighbour poison the husband to get him out of the way? Would the husband and wife poison the husband's sister, a manipulator who is driving them apart?
None of the above, not at all what I predicted, in the worst way possible. The second half of the novel is unbelievably poor, one step from slapstick comedy, with the wife, husband, and neighbour piled into a car, picking up people from different walks of life at every stop, each with their annoying homespun wisdom offering the husband advice on his situation, all staying with the party long past the breaking point of credibility. Just dreadful.
None of the above, not at all what I predicted, in the worst way possible. The second half of the novel is unbelievably poor, one step from slapstick comedy, with the wife, husband, and neighbour piled into a car, picking up people from different walks of life at every stop, each with their annoying homespun wisdom offering the husband advice on his situation, all staying with the party long past the breaking point of credibility. Just dreadful.
whatmeworry's review
4.0
I loved the second half of this so much it’s hard to review it without giving it away, but I’ll do my best. It’s a thriller rather than a mystery, about a rather drab university professor and a young woman he gets involved with. After an initial scene involving a discussion of poison which tips the reader off that there is fun to be had later, the story proceeds at a gentle pace and is in danger of plodding a little until the mid-way point when a wonderful plot turn switches the tale into a desperate and gripping race against time. It’s packed with really engaging characters, a little comedy and some sentiment that just about manages to stay on the right side of cloying. I really liked it.
bvlawson's review
4.0
American author Charlotte Armstrong Lewi (1905-1969) wrote poetry, plays, short stories and 28 novels under the name Charlotte Armstrong and the pen name Jo Valentine, as well as working in the worlds of fashion, advertising and accounting. Her first success as a novelist came in 1942 with the conventional detective offering Lay On, MacDuff! (featuring an early series character MacDougall Duff). Her stories were frequently adapted for TV, and she also penned the teleplays for several episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
She won the Edgar Award in 1957 for her novel A Dram of Poison, sort of a Hitchcockian version of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. It all starts when 55-year-old Kenneth Gibson, a professor and confirmed bachelor, falls for a helpless and penniless woman twenty-three years younger. When his overbearing sister convinces him his wife only married him out of pity and is really in love with their young, handsome neighbor, Gibson decides suicide by poison is the only logical solution. But Gibson accidentally leaves the vial of poison, which looks like harmless bottle of olive oil, on a public bus. Terrified some innocent person could die due to his actions, a madcap search ensues, as more and more characters are brought into the hunt.
It's a difficult book to classify, less of a mystery and more of what can only be defined as "comic suspense," or perhaps a psychological portrait of a man discovering his true nature and seeing people around him as they really are for the first time. Anthony Boucher said it was one of his favorites and that "Reading it is an experience as delightful as it is unclassifiable" (I'm not the only one!), and called Armstrong a cross between Cornell Woolrich and Shirley Jackson. It's a short book, almost novella-length, filled with sly humor and quirky characters.
Other Armstrong books and stories are less whimsical and more noirish, often disguised as political allegories (e.g. commentaries on McCarthyism). Others were social commentaries or psychological studies, with the author herself once saying, "Maybe we are all potential murderers and reading stories about that crime releases us in some way."
Although Armstrong wrote a screenplay based on A Dram of Poison and got Spencer Tracy interested in it at one point, it was never made into a movie. She had much better luck with her novel The Unsuspected, made into a Claude Rains-starring vehicle in 1947.
She won the Edgar Award in 1957 for her novel A Dram of Poison, sort of a Hitchcockian version of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. It all starts when 55-year-old Kenneth Gibson, a professor and confirmed bachelor, falls for a helpless and penniless woman twenty-three years younger. When his overbearing sister convinces him his wife only married him out of pity and is really in love with their young, handsome neighbor, Gibson decides suicide by poison is the only logical solution. But Gibson accidentally leaves the vial of poison, which looks like harmless bottle of olive oil, on a public bus. Terrified some innocent person could die due to his actions, a madcap search ensues, as more and more characters are brought into the hunt.
It's a difficult book to classify, less of a mystery and more of what can only be defined as "comic suspense," or perhaps a psychological portrait of a man discovering his true nature and seeing people around him as they really are for the first time. Anthony Boucher said it was one of his favorites and that "Reading it is an experience as delightful as it is unclassifiable" (I'm not the only one!), and called Armstrong a cross between Cornell Woolrich and Shirley Jackson. It's a short book, almost novella-length, filled with sly humor and quirky characters.
Other Armstrong books and stories are less whimsical and more noirish, often disguised as political allegories (e.g. commentaries on McCarthyism). Others were social commentaries or psychological studies, with the author herself once saying, "Maybe we are all potential murderers and reading stories about that crime releases us in some way."
Although Armstrong wrote a screenplay based on A Dram of Poison and got Spencer Tracy interested in it at one point, it was never made into a movie. She had much better luck with her novel The Unsuspected, made into a Claude Rains-starring vehicle in 1947.
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