I was very pleased recently when I ran across a copy of Elizabeth Daly's "Deadly Nightshade," one of her Henry Gamadge mysteries which I hadn't read yet. As it's long out-of-print, I am not going to do an audio review, but I do recommend it to you.
"Deadly Nightshade" was the second of her 16 books to feature Gamadge. It's set in Maine. Gamadge receives a phone call from a friend, the local police detective, asking if he'd be willing to come up and look at a particularly nasty case that has just broken. It seems that someone has been poisoning children with deadly nightshade berries - the poison is atropine. One of the children has died, one is missing and one has recovered - and all were poisoned on the same day. And there may have been a fourth child poisoned as well.
Gamadge travels to Maine and finds himself in the middle of a complex mystery involving: the poisoned children; a mysterious stranger who goes around taking pictures of children, and who may be responsible for poisoning them; a group of gypsies who may also be involved; a local artist and his family; and more than enough suspects - although the overwhelming question, of course, is what motive could there possibly be?
As a general rule, the mystery is fairly clued, if the reader can get past an enormous assortment of red herrings. The plot is very complex and rather dark; Daly's later novels tended to be a bit simpler to follow. But "Deadly Nightshade" is very much worth reading. Amazon links to several second-hand mystery booksellers offering a variety of Deadly Nightshade
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