Uploaded June 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
BOOK REVIEW
THE POISONOUS SOLICITOR
The True Story of a 1920s Murder Mystery
By Stephen Bates
ISBN: 978 1 78578 817 8
ICON BOOKS
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A MODERN REFRESHING RE-TELLING OF THE JUDICIAL EXECUTION OF MAJOR ARMSTRONG
An appreciation by Elizabeth Robson Taylor MA of Richmond Green Chambers and Phillip Taylor MBE, Head of Chambers, Reviews Editor, “The Barrister”, and Mediator
“The Poisonous Solicitor” is a most readable new book about the Herbert Armstrong case. Some commentators have described the work as “a brilliant narrative investigation into the 1920s case that inspired Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and Margery Allingham”. I felt it is an excellent modern primer for aspiring crime writers curious about the story- and it is a true story!
That is quite a statement because the facts as set out are sadly true. It is not fictitious, and ends with the legal killing of a man, hung by the neck until he was dead based on the evidence of the time. The story is now retold as the participants in this tragedy are all dead! The story also provides a splendid template for all the budding crime fiction novelists of the 21st century who write to recreate life one hundred years ago.
The saga opens on a bleak Tuesday morning in February 1921, when 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. A marvellous setting and a town well worth visiting: Hay on Wye.
Unfortunately for Major Armstrong, within fifteen months of such a sad domestic tragedy, her husband, a solicitor, Herbert Rowse Armstrong, would be arrested, tried and hanged for poisoning her with arsenic, becoming the only solicitor ever to be executed in England.
As the writer says, “Armstrong's story has been 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”.
And 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? The answer is that we will never really know but he did not get the benefit of the doubt.
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. I found it a fascinating read.
The date of publication of this new hardback edition is cited as 7th April 2022.
BOOK REVIEW
THE POISONOUS SOLICITOR
The True Story of a 1920s Murder Mystery
By Stephen Bates
ISBN: 978 1 78578 817 8
ICON BOOKS
iconbooks.com
A MODERN REFRESHING RE-TELLING OF THE JUDICIAL EXECUTION OF MAJOR ARMSTRONG
An appreciation by Elizabeth Robson Taylor MA of Richmond Green Chambers and Phillip Taylor MBE, Head of Chambers, Reviews Editor, “The Barrister”, and Mediator
“The Poisonous Solicitor” is a most readable new book about the Herbert Armstrong case. Some commentators have described the work as “a brilliant narrative investigation into the 1920s case that inspired Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and Margery Allingham”. I felt it is an excellent modern primer for aspiring crime writers curious about the story- and it is a true story!
That is quite a statement because the facts as set out are sadly true. It is not fictitious, and ends with the legal killing of a man, hung by the neck until he was dead based on the evidence of the time. The story is now retold as the participants in this tragedy are all dead! The story also provides a splendid template for all the budding crime fiction novelists of the 21st century who write to recreate life one hundred years ago.
The saga opens on a bleak Tuesday morning in February 1921, when 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. A marvellous setting and a town well worth visiting: Hay on Wye.
Unfortunately for Major Armstrong, within fifteen months of such a sad domestic tragedy, her husband, a solicitor, Herbert Rowse Armstrong, would be arrested, tried and hanged for poisoning her with arsenic, becoming the only solicitor ever to be executed in England.
As the writer says, “Armstrong's story has been 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”.
And 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? The answer is that we will never really know but he did not get the benefit of the doubt.
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. I found it a fascinating read.
The date of publication of this new hardback edition is cited as 7th April 2022.
