Death by arsenic is slow. Esther Castellani experienced nausea, vomiting, severe diarrhea, numbness and eventually paralysis in her limbs, a rash with infected pustules, kidney failure, and ultimately heart failure—thanks to the weed killer her husband Rene had been feeding her over eleven months, often served via milkshake. Eve Lazarus’s account of the 1960s murder in Murder by Milkshake (Arsenal Pulp Press) sheds light on a transitional time in Vancouver. Counterculture was finding an enclave and old morals were waning. You can’t help but wonder if Rene would have killed Esther if his affair with Lolly Miller had occurred four years later, when the first federal Divorce Act was passed. Before that, you had to wait five years and publicize the reasons for your divorce daily for six months, including the name of the other woman—intolerable for a CKNW Radio personality. It’s also impossible not to question the medical system. Esther saw her family doctor nine times in a period of five months; he only suggested a gallbladder X-ray on her final visit. He chalked up her stomach problems to overeating—an extreme example of the often dismissed health concerns of larger-bodied people. Lazarus goes beyond the murder. She tells us about Jeannine, Esther and Rene’s daughter, her life after the crime and her eventual reunion with Lolly’s son, Don, who she had lived with for years, estranged from her own family—a side effect of Rene’s actions.
