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The Poison Machine
- Narrated by: Dan Calley
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
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The Poison Machine
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Summary
London, 1679 - A year has passed since the attempt to murder King Charles II, but London is still a viper's nest of rumored Catholic conspiracies, and of plots against them in turn. When Harry Hunt—estranged from his mentor Robert Hooke—is summoned to the remote and windswept marshes of Norfolk, he is at first relieved to get away from the place.
But in Norfolk, he finds that some Royal workers shoring up a riverbank have made a grim discovery—the skeleton of a dwarf. Harry is able to confirm that the skeleton is that of Captain Jeffrey Hudson, a prominent member of the court once famously given to the Queen in a pie. Except no one knew Hudson was dead, because another man had been impersonating him.
The hunt for the impersonator, clearly working as a spy, will take Harry to Paris, another city bedeviled by conspiracies and intrigues, and back, with encounters along the way with a flying man and a cross-dressing swordswoman—and to the uncovering of a plot to kill the Queen and all the Catholic members of her court. But where? When?
The Poison Machine is a brilliantly imagined historical thriller that will delight listeners of its critically acclaimed predecessor, The Bloodless Boy.
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What listeners say about The Poison Machine
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Bradders
- 13-11-22
Brilliant story
I really enjoyed book 2. Not as many side plots as the previous book, great! Didn’t like the narration though.. although the voices were very good, everything else was spoken very dead pan.. good job the story was so intriguing otherwise I’d have given up
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- The Curator
- 01-03-23
Great story
Very much enjoyed the story of post-Commonwealth shenanigans. Not a big fan of the narrator. One of the characters sounded like Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot and it was all a bit one note but the story of murder and a lost diamond rattled along at a great pace
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Bretton Girl
- 23-05-24
long lists of tedious details not pertinent to the story
There are a lot of details in this story and they may be accurate, then the office stumbles over some really glaring errors that should be obvious to anyone even vaguely familiar with English history pertinent to marriage.
Getting a divorce was incredibly difficult and less you will wealthy and could arrange an act of parliament.
Yet the writer has one of the characters blithely talking about the married woman he is courting and that she will need to pursue legal matters to end her present marriage, as if it's a really easy thing to do.
Secondly the guy who's saying this is apparently a religious minister and historically most religious ministers, including anabaptist ones, were not normally allowed to marry divorced women; it was greatly frowned upon. Consider the fact that it at one time the ruling monarch of this country could not marry a divorced woman or man, and if someone like the Prince of Wales was to do so it could potentially preclude them from the throne. That's one of the reasons why the first marriage of George IV was not legally recognized and that he had to marry someone else or otherwise be excluded from the throne. why? Because we're he to become King he would be head of the church of England.
It's extraordinary to me that this big legal, social and religious factor that impacted literally the lives of everyone in the country from high to low is apparently something the author is ignorant of.
After such a glaring error I really couldn't listen any further it totally took me out of the story to hear such a ridiculous conversation.
Authors shouldn't just research the pet topics that they are interested in when writing their stories (particularly one set in the past) they really need to know about social, religious, political and other elements of everyday life.
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