Category Archives: vampires

Currently Reading

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I read another of Marcia Talley’s Hannah Ives mysteries, Mile High Murder, this past week and I started Final Heir by Faith Hunter.

In Mile High Murder, Hannah joins her friend Claire on a trip to Denver to research legalized marijuana.

Claire, a cancer patient, has a prescription for medical marijuana. She is trying to see marijuana legalized in Maryland. Claire and Hannah are put up in a B and B that provides recreational cannabis in all forms.

Then one of the other guests is murdered and the safe is broken into. Are both crimes linked? Don’t worry, Hannah is on the case.

Regular readers know that I love the Hannah Ives mysteries. I did not care for this one, however. I did not find the characters engaging and the identity of the thieves was easy to guess. I am still looking forward to the newest Hannah Ives, however. Circles of Death will be released March 5.

I am about halfway through Hunter’s Final Heir. The story engages the reader immediately – but these books are long.

Jane and her crew are anticipating the arrival of Mainet Pellisier, grandfather of Leo. Leo, three times dead and reborn, can’t help Jane. Mainet has bound Leo and although he wants to help, he can’t.

Mainet brings the battle to Jane’s house and her friends, the Trueheart witches, come to help. They are almost destroyed as the plane lands.

Besides the non-stop action, one of the features that I admire in this series is the layers. Hunter has thought about the politics of the vampires, the witches, and the humans and of course the baddies whose nefarious aims drive the plot. Although Jane herself is not political, Hunter has clearly thought about the different goals of the various species and how those goals interlock.

Return next week for the full review once I’ve finished the entire novel.

Arsenic

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Arsenic has been known as a poison for millennia. It was so commonly used during the Victorian Age it was called inheritance powder. (Seriously.) It occurs in nature and contaminates water and foodstuffs. (New Mexico has the dubious distinction of having high levels in their water and rice is particularly susceptible to absorbing arsenic.) A slightly sweet odorless and colorless powder, the symptoms of arsenic poisoning mimic cholera or some kind of intestinal distress. It has been used as a cause of death by many many mystery authors.

Women in the Elizabethan era used it in a paste to whiten their complexions. Of course it was absorbed through the skin and a lifetime of use must have meant serious health complications. (Talk about dying for fashion.)

What interests me, though, are the inadvertent poisonings. Napoleon’s hair was shown to have very high levels of arsenic. Was he poisoned by his nearest and dearest while on Elba? What about King George III, the so-called mad King who reigned during the Colonial period and Revolution? He had porphyria, a blood disease that results in dark urine and extreme sensitivity to the sun. (Some scholars think that porphyria was the original seed of the vampire legends.) Well, when they tested King George’s hair, it too displayed high levels of arsenic. Was he poisoned?

They were both probably poisoned by environmental factors. As that time a beautiful emerald green was all the rage for wallpaper. When George Washington built his house he ordered rooms papered in this fashionable color. The problem is that beautiful color was created by arsenic and in damp or humid weather the arsenic came out of the paper into the air. Instant poisoning.