Bernard Bastable (1936–2013)

The third Barnard book I’ve read this month was fully satisfying. More of the more traditional mystery genre than “Cry From the Dark” and more believable than “Mistress of Alderley,” “The Graveyard Position” has cameo appearances by Peace and Oddie, Barnard’s regular detectives. But most of the detection is actually performed by Merlyn Docherty, a young presumptive heir to his aunt’s home and fortune. That Merlyn has been missing and presumed dead by his aunts, cousins and show more even his father complicates matters at first, but this mystery of identity slowly evolves into a more complicated mystery of skeletons in the family closet, and then a present-day death.

I confess that I often have difficulty when deluged with character names and I have to sort through blood relationships (no, War & Peace is not my cup of tea), and felt quite thankful that Barnard provided a family tree for reference.

Characterization is good, pacing fine, the culprit a surprise, and while Barnard’s humor has taken a curmudgeonly turn in his old age, I still enjoy it. OK, I’m a curmudgeon myself. Four stars. show less

I came across this book by happy chance, and will definitely be reading more by Robert Barnard. Set in Norway, which I'd also love to learn more about, Inspector Fagermo finds himself investigating the life of an English stranger whose body is discovered in a snowbank by a man out walking his dog. Why was the man in Tromso, and who there knew enough about him to want him dead?

I love the classic, Christie style of the writing, and the humour of Inspector Fagermo, serving a small town full of show more foreigners and academics. The mystery was strong enough to keep me reading, even while Fagermo's slow but sure methods of detective work held the pace at an amble. Thanks for the random search results, Amazon! show less

There is no greater accolade that I give author Robert Barnard than to say that Bodies, the fourth book in a detective series, is the weakest of the books, and it’s still pretty wonderful.

Superintendent Perry Trethowan’s investigation into the murder of four people hits one dead end after another. The murder victims were a photographer, his assistant and two models during a photo shoot for a skin magazine called Bodies that sounds milder than Playboy at its most innocent stage. Who would show more want any of them dead? Trethowan’s investigation leads him into the more nefarious territory of porn films. The book also provides Barnard’s introduction of Charlie Peace, who goes on to fame in a series of his own.

How much did I like this novel? I’ve already ordered the last novel in the Trethowan series, The Cherry Blossom Corpse, and I’m going to track down the first of the Charlie Peace novels. show less

Here's enormous fun. Sir Oliver Fairleigh-Stubbs is Britain's most successful thriller writer, even though it's generally agreed his books are bloody awful. And so is he: he's vile to his family (except his gold-digging, ghastly daughter) and everyone else around him. So it's not much of a surprise when someone  spikes his favorite after-dinner liqueur with nicotinic acid, bumping the old bastard off. Enter sleuth Inspector Meredith, not an especially literary man, who must trawl among the show more bitchy inhabitants of an English village out of Miss Marple's nightmares as well as the London offices of Sir Oliver's publishers, deep though they are in mourning for the loss of revenue the author's death implies. Could the answer to the mystery lie in the book Sir Oliver wrote years ago but never published, the manuscript that supposedly none but the writer and an ancient ex-secretary have ever seen? It could indeed . . .

The sideswipes at the pretensions of the publishing world are obviously a part of what I found so entertaining about this romp, but the real glory is in its wry evisceration, through understated parody, of the conventions of the "cozy" murder mystery — and yet Barnard's triumph is that the novel functions extremely well as a "cozy" murder mystery itself. show less