Robert Barnard

Sixteen stories deal with a grieving widower, murder, revenge, and a jealous wife

From master mystery writer Robert Barnard, one of his early novels, "Death of a Mystery Writer." First published in 1979, "Death of a Mystery Writer" received an Edgar Award nomination for "Best Novel" of that year. It's with great pleasure that Scribner reissues this beloved novel from one of the most respected names in crime writing.Sir Oliver Fairleigh-Stubbs, overweight and overbearing, collapses and dies at his birthday party while indulging his taste for rare liquors. He had promised his daughter he would be polite and charitable for the entire day, but the strain of such exemplary behavior was obviously too great. He leaves a family relieved to be rid of him, and he also leaves a fortune, earned as a bestselling mystery author.To everyone's surprise, Sir Oliver's elder son, who openly hated his father, inherits most of the estate. His wife, his daughter, and his younger son are each to receive the royalties from one carefully chosen book. But the manuscript of the unpublished volume left to Sir Oliver's wife -- a posthumous "last case" that might be worth millions -- has disappeared. And Sir Oliver's death is beginning to look less than natural.Into this bitter household comes Inspector Meredith, a spirited Welshman who in some ways resembles Sir Oliver's fictional hero. In Robert Barnard's skillful hands, Inspector Meredith's investigation becomes not only a classic example of detection but an elegant and humorous slice of crime.

Perce Spender, a working-class Londoner, is unexpectedly transformed into the twelfth Earl of Ellesmere when a distant relative dies. But he would rather be warming a bar stool in his local pub, and he's taken up residence at Chetton Hall only until arrangements can be made to sell it. Getting rid of the family estate displeases at least one of Perce's greedy offspring, however, and on the morning after a family party the new Earl is found dead.The Chief Constable's plethora of suspects is not the social-register list he was anticipating--one of Perce's sons is now in jail, one ought to be, one daughter is a bit too curious about the will, and daughter-in-law Dixie, now the new Countess of Ellesmere, has been keeping company with a small-time crook.

With the Nazis bombing London on a nightly basis, many families sent their children to the comparative safety of the countryside. When the Blitz ended, the families came for their kids, but no one ever came for Simon Thorn. His name appears on no evacuation list, and none of his belongings offer any clues to his origins. Now an adult, Simon is puzzled by an odd sense of familiarity when he walks down certain London streets. He remembers years of screaming nightmares that would terrify his bewildered foster parents. And he resolves to find out where he originally came from, even as everything he uncovers suggests that, really, he doesn't want to know.

Scotland Yard Superintendent Perry Trethowan is enjoying a vacation evening at a cozy Yorkshire pub when an old woman shows him an original, unpublished Bronte manuscript. Trethowan agrees to engage in a little literary detective work, but he doesn't realize that for a criminal the manuscript is motive for theft, torture--and murder.

""In this superbly written suspense novel from British author Barnard, ...former soccer star Matt Harper, now a television and radio personality, is the new owner of Elderholm, one of a small street of sturdy old houses in Leeds. As he and his remodeling contractor take a look around the attic, they come upon the skeleton of a toddler-sized child. The deeper Matt and Det. Sgt. Charlie Peace probe, the more certain they become that the child met its tragic death in 1969, the same fateful summer Matt had spent in this very community. ...Barnard quickly pulls his readers into the plot and holds them there right through the final pages, leaving them, along with his hero, pondering further possibilities.Publishers Weekly

Inspector Perry Trethowan reads in the obituaries that his estranged father has died under peculiar he was fooling around with a form of self-torture called strappado. At the request of his supervisor, Peter returns to his ancestral home to determine if any of his cousins or siblings might have helped the old man to his bizarre end.

The Ketterick Festival revolves around the Saracen’s Head, a Jacobean inn with its inn-yard and balconies miraculously preserved intact, due to the sloth of successive landlords. Here in festival time are performed the lesser-known masterpieces of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre. This year it is The Chaste Apprentice of Bowe (a play of uncertain authorship, since no one owned up at the time). But the actors find that the Saracen’s Head has been transformed by its new landlord – an Australian know-all with an insatiable curiosity and an instinct for power. The loathsome Des’s activities bring him into conflict with actors, committee, even the performers of Adelaide di Birckenhead, the little-known Donizetti opera that is the other lynchpin of the Festival programme. So adept is Des at fomenting friction and ferreting in the undergrowth of private lives that it is not surprising that it all ends in biers.

Sara Causseley could not be more delighted by her new job as governess to the aristocratic Hallam clan. The children are adorable, the gardens are a dream, and the conversation stimulating. But ominous political clouds are gathering over Europe, and as England slips inexorably toward World War II, the Hallams' political views make the family increasingly unpopular. No one, though, suspects the extent of the malice that is percolating in the surrounding countryside until a human skeleton'and then a human corpse'are found on the Hallam grounds, sending some kind of ugly message.

Murder pays no respect to rank...or the neighborhood. And so it happened that young aristocrat Timothy Wycliffe was bludgeoned to death in his elegantly furnished flat in Belgravia by a person or persons unknown. Unknown, in fact, for 30 years. Then the dead man's friend Peter Proctor―once a young man on his way up in the diplomatic service, now a retired Member of Parliament―seeks an antidote to boredom by attempting to write his own memoirs. Unfortunately, they seem to be creating more problems than he anticipated, and not just of the writer's block variety. Peter keeps getting sidetracked by speculations on Timothy's death. The murder was allegedly accomplished by a beating from one of his boyfriends. But Peter can't accept so simple a solution, so he begins to probe the past. In so doing, he opens a fascinating window on British society during the 1950s and its changing―and unchanging―mores since.

Social infighting in the tiny village of Twythching, just when Radio Broadwich starts to do a documentary on the town, leads to some poison pen letters and a murder, which Inspector George Parrish must investigate. Reprint. IP.

Masterly mystery writer Robert Barnard transports us to the Yorkshire town of Haworth, once home to the literary Brontës, now a crowded tourist mecca, for The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori, which begins with the shocking discovery of a young man's strangled body in an Indian Tandoori restaurant parking lot. Who is the victim, and how did he come to meet this untimely fate? Detective Constable Charlie Peace and Detective Superintendent Mike Oddie's search for answers soon leads them to Ashworth, a nearby artists' colony, where young Irishman Declan O'Hearn had recently sought work as a handyman.No ordinary place, Ashworth is something of a shrine to once-renowned painter Ranulph Byatt, an egotistic man who craves adulation from his inferiors and resists the judgment of his peers. To the surprise of all and the jealousy of some, Declan O'Hearn is one of the rare people Byatt welcomes into his studio and allows to watch him paint.Charlie Peace, an experienced police officer and always a favorite among Barnard's readers, has rarely encountered such tense undercurrents as he finds at Ashworth, and he's perhaps never been among a group of people so ill-matched. They live in supposed community but lead uniquely warped lives. How does young Declan, inexperienced in the ways of the world, seeking his first great adventure, fit into this dangerous mix?Charlie suspects Declan found more than adventure at Ashworth. Following in Declan's footsteps, he searches for the incredible story behind the body in the parking lot and the sad facts behind the destroyed hopes of a youthful wanderer.With the kind of classic twist that only Barnard can provide, The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori evokes memories of such Barnard masterpieces as Death by Sheer Torture while claiming its own place in the Barnard body of work as a powerful, insightful, witty, and always superbly entertaining novel of suspense.

Professor Belville-Smith had bored university audiences in England with the same lecture for fifty years. Now he was crossing the Australian continent, doing precisely the same. Never before had the reaction been so extreme, however, for shortly after an undistinguished appearance at Drummondale University, the doddering old professor is found brutally murdered.

It was midday on December 21st in the city of Tromsø when the boy was last seen - a tall, blond boy swathed in anorak and scarf against the Arctic noon. After that he wasn't seen again, not until three months later, when Professor Mackenzie's dog started sniffing around in the snow and uncovered a human ear - attached to a naked corpse. Nobody knew who he was, or where he had come from. And after three months it was almost impossible to track down the identity of the corpse. But Inspector Fagermo refused to give up - and as he probed deeper into the Arctic city he began to discover a dangerous conspiracy of blackmail, espionage, and cold-blooded murder.

From Robert Barnard, the internationally acclaimed Diamond Dagger–winning crime writer . . . Kit Philipson has always felt like something of a stranger in his family. Growing up as the only child of professional parents in Glasgow, Scotland, he had every advantage. His mother was a teacher; his father, a journalist, escaped from Nazi Germany at the age of three on one of the 1939 Kindertransports. But on her deathbed, Kit’s mother tells him he was adopted and that his birth name was Novello. Soon, vague memories of his early life begin to surface: his nursery, pictures on the wall, the smell of his birth mother when she’d been cooking. And, sometimes, there are more disturbing memories—of strangers taking him by the hand and leading him away from the only family he had ever known. A search of old newspaper files reveals that a three-year-old boy named Peter Novello was abducted from his parents’ holiday hotel in Sicily in 1989. Now the young man who has known himself only as Kit sets out to rediscover his past, the story of two three-year-old boys torn from their mothers in very different circumstances. Kit’s probing inquiries are sure to bring surprises. They may also unearth dangerous secrets that dare never be revealed. With sharp wit and deep insight, Robert Barnard sweeps away all preconceptions in this powerful study of maternal love and the danger of obsession.

The wife of a vicar, Rosemary Sheffield suddenly decides she no longer believes in God, leaves her marriage, and befriends a Bosnian named Stanko, who ends leading her back to the parish and embroiling her murder investigation. Reprint.

Hilariously satirizing Britain's education system, a mystery at the Burleigh School involves the inept leadership of its headmaster, Edward Crumwallis, and the evil pupil he chooses as his next head boy--sneaky sycophant Hillary Frome.

The women of Hexton-on-Weir decide that Father Battersby, the new vicar, cannot remain professionally celibate, but their matchmaking plans run amok when the church gala planned to draw out the vicar is halted by murder. Reprint. IP.

When Scotland Yard's Perry Trethowan accompanies his sister Christobel to the Romantic Novelists' Association meeting in Bergen, Norway, he hardly expects that the main item on the agenda will be murdered

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. From the author of Fatal Attachment. Reprint.

A mysterious envelope arrives on Eve McNabb's doorstep soon after she has buried her mother, a woman who kept many secrets. The puzzling letter inside this envelope hints at an illicit passion between the letter writer and Eve's mother, May McNabb. Even when she was a child, Eve sensed that there were parts of May's life she would never understand. She would never know the details of her parents' marriage or why her father suddenly disappeared from her life. While Eve has always believed that her father was dead, she begins to wonder whether her mother's life as a widow had been a ruse. Will she have to question everything her mother has told her? Could her father be alive and well? The letter writer may have some answers, but how can Eve find him or her?With only a blurred postmark for a clue, Eve sets out to locate the writer and journey into her own past. What she never suspected was that questions can be dangerous, perhaps even deadly...Filled with piercing wit and illuminating insight into the human condition, Robert Barnard's Last Post proves yet again that he is one of the great masters of mystery.

Can the truly rich get away with murder―or is there always a price? Two days in May bring Colin Pinnock's career to a peak. His party wins a stunning election victory and he wins a new government office. Among the congratulations pouring in lurks one grubby card "Who do you think you are?" Is this someone trying to put him down a peg, or is it someone holding damaging information? Come to think of it, is it possible that Colin's parents are not what they appear? As he probes, Colin is led back in time to an old political scandal and a murder case ushering a politician out of office―and out of sight ever after. Soon events in the present start tangling with those of the past and Colin finds himself facing something worse than the toppling of his career―his life is in danger.

Princess Helena had only a distant claim to the throne, but when her friends and lovers began turning up dead, Buckingham Palace demanded to know why. And Perry Trethowan of Scotland Yard had to catch a cold-blooded killer intent on causing a scandal that could shake the nation.

Lydia Perceval is happier than she's been in years. Two new boys have come into her life. A nationally known writer of popular biographies, Lydia lives a sterile, lonely existance in a lovely cottage in the West Yorkshire village of Bly. Her biographies of such men as Lord Nelson, Byron and Frederick the Great have brough recognition and affluence, but Lydia's personal life has been bleak since her adored young nephews left town years ago. Gavin and Maurice Hoddle--her sister Thea's sons--had been more at home in Lydia's cottage than in their own. The special relationship began slowly as the boys grew to maturity, and, gradually, Lydia had absorbed them into her sphere, imposing her cultural and class values, and alienating them from their parents. Gavin was the brighter of the two, a clever, strong, courageous lad. Lydia had high expectations for him, but he went to war in the Falklands and died a terrible death. Maurice remains a disappointment. Instead of the distinguished career Lydia had envisioned for him, he labours on a television soap opera.Gavin and Maurice have escaped from Lydia, by death and by distance, but thirteen-year-old Colin Belingham and his fifteen-year-old brother, Ted, are likely replacements.Once again, as with her nephews twenty years ago, Lydia disrupts lives, forging ahead with a single-mindedness that is devois of compassion and self-knowledge. Many people have reason to hate Lydia Perceval. One of them hates enough to kill...

"People who think of village mysteries as being sweet and simple must never have read one of Robert Barnard's subversive little gems."― New York Times Well-known actress Caroline Fawley has given up her successful stage and television career for love and life at Alderley, an elegant country home "bought" for her by her married "friend," international business titan Marius Fleetwood. Despite the inquisitive villagers, Caroline is happy and the world is good...until a mysterious young man backpacking through the countryside arrives at the door. He says his name is Peter Bagshaw, but Caroline can't help noticing his physical resemblance to Marius. Is he Marius' son? What else has Marius hidden from Caroline? Who is Marius anyway? Is everything about him a lie? Then a murder occurs....

Novelist Walter Machin, with a minor literary reputation and out-of-print oeuvre, becomes fashionable after his death; escalating the import of his well-guarded papers. In the most peculiar setting his widow and ex-wife live in their manse, where multiple mysteries abound and a fatal competition ensues between them.

Robert Barnard, the internationally acclaimed Diamond Dagger-winning crime writer, dissects family bonds at their best and worst in this stunning novel of suspense. What an honor--to become trustee of an English stately home museum. Yorkshire Detective Inspector Charlie Peace's wife, Felicity, is initially thrilled when she's asked to join the board that oversees Walbrook Manor, an eighteenth-century mansion that's now part of a charitable trust. She's in for some surprises.With its shabby salons and drafty hallways, Walbrook shows signs of the financial burden it caused its recent owners, members of the related Quarles and Fiennes families, known more for feuds than for affectionate familial ties. They are known also for shadowy intrigues, great and small, some of which may emerge now that Walbrook and its archives are open to the public. The revelations could be devastating . . . and dangerous.Rupert Fiennes and Sir Stafford Quarles represent two lines of Walbrook's lords of the manor. Rupert seems relieved to have relinquished the estate to charitable hands, while Sir Stafford clings with perhaps unseemly pride to his position as chairman of the Walbrook Manor Trust Board. A tentative peace reigns, but when the wreck of a car and the remains of a body turn up in a nearby lake, it soon becomes clear that one of Walbrook's grimmest secrets may date to the years between the two world wars and may involve something much worse than mere malice.With police resources focused on more timely cases, Charlie and Felicity are left to discover that old sins are never forgotten, that "family" means more than a slot on the ancestral tree, and that sometimes there can be a good reason for murder.Suspenseful, witty, and, as always, superbly insight-ful, "A Charitable Body "shows acclaimed master of mystery Robert Barnard at his clever best.

Vernon Watts may have been beloved by the millions of faithful viewers of the long-running soap opera "Jubilee Terrace" but his fellow cast members knew him for what he was -- an egotistical former music-hall performer whose untimely death in a pedestrian accident was not something to be universally regretted. Sadly, though, director Reggie Friedman soon fills the supposed void by asking Hamish Fawley, an equally unpleasant former member of the "Jubilee Terrace" troupe, to rejoin the soap. Hamish was never much liked. Now he's more obnoxious than ever.The mood on the set is not exactly serene, a situation made worse when the police receive an anonymous letter suggesting that Vernon Watts's "accident" may in fact have been murder. Did one of his fellow actors push Vernon into the oncoming traffic?Detective Inspector Charlie Peace faces tough challenges as he probes the make-believe world of skilled thespians to find a possible killer. With a cast of suspects who are trained to emote on cue, Charlie will need all of his policeman's instincts if he's to avert further tragedy.Writing with his usual acerbic wit and penetrating insight into human foibles, acclaimed master of mystery Robert Barnard gives us another winning entry in his magnificent body of work.

When the editor of a soft-porn magazine arrives one morning to find four dead bodies brightly illuminated by the magazine's photography studio lights, Perry Trethowan must probe the secrets of London's Soho district in search of the killer

From Robert Barnard, the internationally acclaimed Diamond Dagger-winning crime writer . . .With A Fall from Grace , Robert Barnard triumphs once again with a witty tale of family discord and murder.Detective Inspector Charlie Peace and his wife, Felicity, are shocked when Felicity's difficult dad, Rupert Coggenhoe, suddenly announces that he's moving north to their Yorkshire village. Felicity has never much liked her father, and to have him as a near-neighbor fills her with foreboding. The boorish old man has always loved to impress the ladies, young and old, by exaggerating his modest success as a novelist. True to form, soon after his move to Slepton Edge he surrounds himself with adoring females, including a precocious, theatrical teenager named Anne Michaels. Rupert and Anne could make a lethal combination.Rumors fly, but Felicity convinces herself that Rupert would do nothing seriously wrong. He can be annoying and outrageous but he's not a criminal. She relies on a friend, a doctor who seems to be strangely aware of everything that's happening in the community, to warn her if he hears of anything really troubling. She doesn't have long to wait, but the news is not what she expects. It's worse. A body has been found and it looks like murder. Stunned by a difficult reality, Felicity is even more shocked to discover that she, herself, may be a suspect.This is one criminal investigation that's much too close to home for Charlie Peace. He's not officially on the case, but he uses his copper's instincts and a husband's heart to find a killer and to discover anew the meaning of family.Praised for his "perfect pitch, exquisite pacing, and meticulous plotting" (Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times ), Robert Barnard proves yet again that he is one of the great masters of mystery.

From master of mystery Robert Barnard comes a brilliantly witty and piercingly observant new suspense novel featuring one of the most dysfunctional families ever to grace crime fiction. Meet the Cantelos of Leeds, England. To call the Cantelos dysfunctional is actually a wild understatement. But is one of them also a killer? Clarissa Cantelo, a skilled clairvoyant, apparently thought so. Believing that her sixteen-year-old nephew, Merlyn Docherty, was in peril, she sent him into hiding in Italy, far away from the rest of her family. She told them he was dead. It was safer that way. Now Clarissa herself has died, and Merlyn, a successful lawyer and civil servant who still lives abroad, has returned to Leeds to claim his inheritance. First, he must prove his identity. Is he really Merlyn or, as some of his long-lost relations say they suspect, is he an imposter? Merlyn doesn't mind confirming his identity, but he'd at least like to move into the house that Aunt Clarissa left him in her will while he gets to know some of his relatives. And the house may hold some clues to the Cantelos' past. What is the dreadful family secret that has upset relations between mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, filling even the youngest generation with fear? If Merlyn discovers the truth, buried under decades of deception, his life may once again be in danger. Merlyn must start at the beginning if he is to find the answers. All roads seem to lead back to his grandfather, the formidable Merlyn Cantelo, renowned in the family as an object of both fear and loathing. Though the old man who caused such pain to his family died years ago, his malevolence lives on. Somebody wants young Merlyn gone. With help from police detectives Mike Oddie and Charlie Peace, Merlyn must find that person before the Cantelo curse works its evil again. Wickedly observant and full of his trademark sly twists, The Graveyard Position proves once more that Robert Barnard is in a class of his own.