The Poisonous Solicitor: The True Story of a 1920s Murder Mystery by Stephen Bates - Non Fiction - Hardback

Condition: BRAND NEW. Format: Hardback. ISBN: 9781785788178. Publisher: Icon Books. Overview:. The Poisonous Solicitor by Stephen Bates is a meticulously researched true-crime history that reopens one of the most infamous poisoning cases of the twentieth century. Set in the isolated borderlands between Wales and England, it retells the death of Katharine Armstrong in 1921 and the trial of her husband, Herbert Rowse Armstrong, the only solicitor ever executed in England. Combining archival detail with page-turning narrative, this hardback is essential reading for true-crime fans and history lovers.. About the Book:. On a bleak February morning in 1921, 48-year-old Katharine Armstrong died in the bedroom of her Edwardian villa overlooking the hills of the Welsh borders. Within fifteen months her husband, Hay-on-Wye solicitor Herbert Rowse Armstrong, was arrested, tried, and hanged for poisoning her with arsenic. Stephen Bates returns to the case a hundred years on, reconstructing the claustrophobic atmosphere of a small market town gripped by suspicion and scandal. Drawing on court records, contemporary newspaper reports, and previously overlooked evidence, Bates questions whether Armstrong's guilt was ever truly proven, and explores how the case's ambiguities went on to influence the golden age of detective fiction, including the work of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. The narrative moves between forensic detail and human drama, examining the fallibility of early twentieth-century justice and the fragile line between evidence and assumption. Bates writes with the pace of a thriller while maintaining the rigour of a historian, making this as much a study of Edwardian Britain as it is a courtroom mystery. Readers who enjoy narrative non-fiction that reads like fiction will find plenty to savour, from the eerie domestic setting to the tense unravelling of the trial. It is a story retold for a century, and Bates' account stands out for its balance and freshness..