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Death returns to a Yorkshire village when a museum opens on the site of an unexplained murder/suicide where a renowned author killed his sister with an ax and shot himself.Tags
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It was Mark Twain who said "Write what you know." Robert Barnard who is a wonderful as well as prolific author may well have taken that advice because many of his books are about writers of various kinds. Indeed he wrote about 'The Death of a Mystery Writer",'The Case of the Missing Brontë', as well as about a historical writer in 'A fatal Attachment'.
In this mystery, AHOV the mystery surrounds a long dead brother and sister who wrote dreary literary works that are coming into fashion again. There has been a push to organize the fans as well as set up a museum. Detective Constable Charlie Peace is attending a conference at the new museum because the organizer Gerald Suzman is known to the police as a con man and so far his motives for show more resuscitating the interest in the dead siblings is not obvious.
Before things get very far murder enters the mix and Charlie has his job to do. Barnard's characters are so well drawn that the reader is engrossed in the story and and even gets to believe that the dead Sneddon siblings are real. I can recommend this book. show less
In this mystery, AHOV the mystery surrounds a long dead brother and sister who wrote dreary literary works that are coming into fashion again. There has been a push to organize the fans as well as set up a museum. Detective Constable Charlie Peace is attending a conference at the new museum because the organizer Gerald Suzman is known to the police as a con man and so far his motives for show more resuscitating the interest in the dead siblings is not obvious.
Before things get very far murder enters the mix and Charlie has his job to do. Barnard's characters are so well drawn that the reader is engrossed in the story and and even gets to believe that the dead Sneddon siblings are real. I can recommend this book. show less
Full of satirical references to culture vultures, Literary Societies, writers and publishing - including the fictitious publishers, Cowper-Hollins and The Untamed Shrew.
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Robert Barnard, a former Professor of English at Tromso University, is Chairman of the Bronte Society. His more than thirty crime novels include A Hovering of Vultures (Corgi/Transworld,1993), which revolves round the murder of the Chairman of a literary society at its inaugural conference, the plot hinging on copyright and the forgery of literary relics. At "literary dos like this ," one of show more Barnard's characters relates, "you get all ages and types, but what is common to most of them is a sort of mild mania .... They've got themselves fixated on this one author, often for some odd, personal reason. Some of them hardly read any other author, just madly reread the one." Looking round the hall as the conference gathered, the Chairman reflects that the audience is"gratifyingly young" ..... By which he "meant that there were more under sixties than are generally found in such societies". show less
added by KayCliff
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Common Knowledge
- Original title
- A Hovering of Vultures
- Original publication date
- 1993
- Important places
- Yorkshire, England, UK
- First words
- Mrs Marsden set out the enamel saucepans on the griddle in front of the open fireplace, alongside the blackened kettle.
- Quotations
- `literary dos like this ... You get all ages and types, but what is common to most of them is a sort of mild mania. ... They've got themselves fixated on this one author, often for some odd, personal reason. Some of them hard... (show all)ly read any other author, just madly reread the one'.
The typewriter was an ancient machine, a real bone-cruncher, that looked as if it would require special finger-strengthening exercises to operate with comfort. There were pencils, a stubby fountain-pen and a bottle of Waterma... (show all)n's blue-black ink.
That typewriter for Susannah is out of place: she never used one. Got someone to type her things up for the publishers, I suppose, but she used an old fountain-pen and wrote the novels in ruled exercise books.
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- Reviews
- 2
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- (3.46)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 13
- ASINs
- 3
