Today, I went to Waterstones in Birmingham and saw Poison Panic on the shelf. It was my book! In a book shop! Not only does my book exist, but… it was on a bookshelf! In a shop! So I paused by it, and posed in an awkward fashion, with Tom Hardy’s naked torso just out of shot above my head, Ian Brady leering into the side of the picture, and PD James (gawd bless ‘er) just lurking beneath.
My book. Hurrah! There were more copies on the other shelf. Thanks to the combined forces of coincidence, my surname, and the alphabet, Poison Panic sits next to a book on the Hell’s Angels, written by the bloke who gave Lee Marvin the stripey T-shirt he wore in The Wild One. So I’ve been told.
Appropriately, perhaps, another poisoner can be found beside my Essex ladies – Carol Baxter’s The Peculiar Case of the Electric Constable, on Tawell, the “Kwaker”, accused of murdering his mistress with prussic acid. He was caught when the police chased him down using the telegraph, after Tawell had escaped by train. There wasn’t a letter Q on it, hence they spelt Quaker “Kwaker”. You’ll meet him in Fatal Evidence – although Professor Taylor wasn’t an expert witness at the trial, one of his books was. Had there been Waterstone’s in the 1800s, I’m sure Taylor would have stood by his tomes on the shelves too, and asked someone to do a quick sketch as cameras weren’t too quick back then.
And so that’s what I did on Saturday.
