NHFT virtual book club meeting #27 - The Poison Artist

After our visit to revolutionary France with Madame Tussaud in Edward Carey's Little, we are moving to a contemporary, fog-shrouded San Francisco in the shape of Jonathan Moore's twisty psychological thriller, The Poison Artist.

Caleb Maddox is a toxicologist who just wants to drown his sorrows after an ugly breakup with his girlfriend

At a bar he meets the beautiful and bewitching Emmeline who has a taste for absinthe but then vanishes into the night.

He must find her.

As his search begins, Caleb becomes entangled in a serial-murder investigation. The police have been fishing men from the bay, and the post-mortems are inconclusive. One of the victims vanished from the bar the night Caleb met Emmeline. When questioned, Caleb can’t offer any information, nor does he tell them he’s been secretly helping the city’s medical examiner, an old friend, study the chemical evidence on the victims’ remains. 

The search for the killer soon entwines with Caleb’s hunt for Emmeline, and the closer he gets to each, the more dangerous his world becomes...

'An electrifying read... I haven't read anything so terrifying since Red Dragon.’ Stephen King

The next meeting will be Thursday the 24th of August at 7pm via MS Teams where we will be discussing the novel. You can find the link via the Events Calendar on the Staff Room.