Perfect Poison by Amanda Quick was almost as good in a second reading as it was in the first. This book brings us back to the Victorian Era when the Arcane Society was becoming a little more organized. Lucinda, a botanist with paranormal talents with plants hires Caleb Jones, whose talents lie in the field of investigation to help find out who stole a rare fern from her conservatory. Lucinda has recently started to help the police investigate crimes where a person may have been poisoned but on her most recent consultation she learns that the poison used contained a small portion of her missing fern among the other deadly substances. The plot moves smoothly and romance blooms as more crimes are committed and Lucinda and Caleb work together. The crimes are solved the romance reaches the traditional happy ending and one is left looking for another Arcane novel to read. Turn of the century... Caleb Jones - talent, seeing patterns, organizing chaos; after taking down the 3rd circle, his brother puts him in charge of Jones Investigations - seeded by the Arcane Society; Caleb believes he is going insane, and dying as his father before him... on his father's death bed, his father told him of a journal of great grandfather, which causes obsession, insanity, and death for those with their talent; Caleb drawn to the book, and is feeling the same - fears his end is inevitable;Lucinda Bromley - 30 years old; talent, sensing poisons and botany; her father and his partner dead (suicide and murder), and her fiance (chosen because he met her logical criteria) is dead (poisoned - she blamed, but not proven - carries stigma of his death though; and inspector uses her talent to help when deaths include poison; Patricia - her cousin, comes to her for assistance in finding a husband... she has a logical list of what she is looking for (patterned after Lucinda's), and Caleb suggests his aunt, the Arcane matchmaker... and she is matched to ____, with a talent to find things, and get into them... he made money as a thief, stealing from other thieves, tried to make it as a magician (not much of a showman though), Jones uses his talents... and hires him to protect Patricia and Lucinda;Lucinda asked to check out a death, and detects poison, a poison that includes an element of a plant only she had (retrieved from the jungle with her father), and that had been stolen from her... so she hires Caleb Jones to find the thief of her plant, to clear her... and they begin to work together...it ends up that the chemist who has her plant is hired by the 7th circle to recreate the founder's formula... and one of the 7th circle and his crazy son are taking the formula as he is perfecting it... they get the 7th circle guys in the end... but the chemist escapes...and along the way, Lucinda solves the reason the book made his father crazy and is affecting Caleb - the pages were doused in a halucigenic drug - so they burn the book...and Caleb is free to offer marriage to Lucinda - who does make him work for it...
What do You think about The Perfect Poison (2009)?
A fast moving story with magic and poison.
—jjzack
