The Story of a Murderer
"I, Jeronimus, am a man of phials, a measurer of powders on bronze scales, a potion brewer, an opium and arsenic merchant. The primped and perfumed Amsterdam burghers came to me in droves requiring cures for fevers, love balms, the miscarriage of a bastard child and, of course, poisons. Ah, poisons . . ."
So speaks Jeronimus Cornelisz, thirty-year-old apothecary and undermerchant . . . and seriously deranged man.
This novel is based on the true story of the Dutch East India flagship, the "Batavia", which foundered off the coast of Western Australia in 1629. Jeronimus Cornelisz, a man with mutiny, murder, rape and torture on his mind, assumes command of the survivors, who all thought they were lucky to be alive. With Cornelisz in control, however, an extraordinary reign of terror begins, leaving those who survived wishing they had gone down with the ship.
