New Releases by Robert Barnard

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The MP for Bootham East was something of a fish out of water – a Tory with a conscience. When he was actually fished out of water, the Thames to be precise, it looked like a clear case of suicide or accident. But as Superintendent Sutcliffe’s investigations got under way, and as the by-election campaign to elect his successor hotted up, some very murky political waters were dredged and made to reveal their secrets. The local Labour Party had been hijacked by the extreme left, the Tory Party had had an unattractive young man with dubious City connections foisted on it, and the Alliance candidate had something nasty in his past he would prefer to forget. In fact, by the time of the declaration poll, all the parties wished the by-election had never had to happen, and that the dirt had remained brushed away under the carpet. In this witty and penetrating look at British politics, Robert Barnard shows a ‘sharp and knowing eye’, as well as what Newsweek called his ‘wit . . . energy and style.

Lill Hodsden was a monster. She rode roughshod over her daughter, wiped her feet on her husband, blackmailed her lovers and smothered her sons with a mother love that left them screaming out for freedom. Lill set the hackles rising all over Todmarsh, the little South Coast town she queened it over. She was just asking to be done in. And her sons were very ready to oblige. In fact, they had it all worked out, for Saturday night. But when Lill was found garrotted on Thursday, on the way home from one of her boy-friends’, the case was wide open, and half Todmarsh would have regarded the murderer as a civic benefactor. Inspector McHale, on his first murder case, is a man who values intelligence, particularly his own. He is convinced he is going to discover the killer. But is he going to discover the right one? In the claustrophobic relationships around the appalling Lill, Robert Barnard has used his gift for creating murderable monsters to set up a murder everybody can sympathize with.

First published in 1979, Unruly Son received an Edgar Award nomination for “Best Novel” of the year. 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 behaviour 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 skilful hands, Inspector Meredith’s investigation becomes not only a classic example of detection but an elegant and humorous slice of crime.

Norway in cherry blossom time seemed exactly the right place to hold a conference of the World Association of Romantic Novelists (WARN for short). Superintendent Perry Trethowan wondered at times how he had allowed his sister to ‘con’ him into accompanying her to the conference but he finally decided that his role was to be one of amused detachment and observation, most especially of the two Queens of the Conference – frothy, gushy, lethal Amanda Fairchild, the British challenger, and the vast, malevolent Lorelei Zuckerman from America. What Perry had not been prepared for was a body – one clothed in billowing pink, with a bough of cherry blossom carefully placed on the corpse. It was a most unusual murder, in a most unusual place. ‘Mr Barnard disports himself with reliable zest, humour and cunning’ Sunday Times ‘Immaculately plotted, written with a touch as light as thistledown, and infused with gentle malice, this is a delicious soufflé of a whodunnit and the secret, which is worth waiting for, is kept to the end. Brilliant, Mr Barnard’ Irish Times ‘The sort of exhilarating and satisfactory performance readers have come to expect from the virtuoso barnard’ Financial Times

The body of a young man, almost naked, in the car park behind one of Haworth’s many eating establishments marks the beginning of the case, and it is his identity that is the first puzzle for DC Charlie Peace and his superior Detective Superintendent Oddie. But before long the puzzle that most concerns them is the nature of the close-knit artistic community where Declan O’Hearn had acted as odd-job boy. The little knot of people seem to be united less by their ability as painters than by a common worship of the distinguished artist Ranulph Byatt, who has not only brought them together, but seems to prefer the adulation of his inferiors to the judgement of his equals. Peace, searching for clues, soon starts to wonder if there isn’t a sinister reason for this. And as the search for the killer gathers pace, Peace and Oddie uncover a series of dark secrets on the harsh Haworth landscape. Atmospheric, witty and perceptive, The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori is vintage Robert Barnard.

A celebrity scholar in a small village tears her nephews from their immediate family and raises them in an atmosphere of cruelty. As old Lydia Perceval plans to destroy yet another group of impressionable young children’s love for their parents, the list of those who would have her die grows longer.

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 thirty years. When 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 they create 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.

At the Ketterick Arts Festival no one relishes the dubious art of innuendo more than Des Capper, a font of dubious gossip and unwanted advice. To the horror of the actors and singers performing at the Festival, Des has been promoted to landlord of the Saracen’s Head, the Elizabethan inn that is at the Festival’s heart. And when Des toddles off to meet his maker, courtesy of someone’s helpful shove, only his wretched wife can summon up a tear. Readers, meanwhile, will have trouble containing their snickers at the wickedly witty characterizations.

In Barnard’s smoothly skilled sixteenth mystery, Caroline and Roderick Cotterel live a quiet life in Sussex with their grown, learning-disabled daughter and Roderick’s senile, bedridden father Benedict, a once-famous and notorious novelist. But when Roderick’s half-sister Cordelia asks to visit and look through Benedict’s papers, things liven up. Their father’s illegitimate daughter, she is writing a biography of her mother, Dame Myra Mason, a renowned actress whose rancorous break-up with their father had been much publicized. The biography will be more in the line of an expose, Cordelia having been emotionally abused by her mother, and no one is surprised when Dame Myra herself shows up to put a stop to it. When she is murdered in the local pub that night a host of possible suspects, led of course by Cordelia, is revealed. After some admirable and intuitive sleuthing by Chief Inspector Meredith identifies the murderer and accomplice, a secret long harbored by Caroline and Roderick is also disclosed. Appealing and distasteful characters alike make this another highly entertaining diversion from Barnard.

Taking a job as a governess for a family with an unpopular opinion against the war, Sara and the Hallam family begin to be on the receiving end of nasty and threatening crimes in this thrilling novel from Edgar Award nominee Robert Barnard. 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 is 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.

From eight-time Edgar Award nominee Robert Barnard comes a thrilling murder mystery set against the backdrop of a romance writer convention in Norway. Scotland Yard’s Perry Trethowan never wanted to make the trip to Norway for the World Association of Romantic Novelists convention. But it was hard saying no to his newly published sister, Christobel. And besides, the worst he expected was the chilly Scandanavian weather and a harmless if irritating menu of fanciful writers and flowery language. Who could’ve known that backbiting, malice, and bitter rivalry were the true customs of this convention and that the plot line would soon include murder? Amanda Fairchild, the genre’s amorous doyenne, ends up dead while en route to a fjord-side tryst of her own, and the dauntless Trethowan must discover which of these authors has turned the page from romance to homicide.

The rigidly conservative town of Hexton-on-Weir, where twelve-year residents, such as veterinarian Marcus Kitteredge and his wife Helen, are still regarded as newcomers, sponsors a church fair which becomes the background for murder.

The body of a young man, almost naked, found in the car park behind a Haworth restaurant marks the beginning of the case, and it is his identity that is the first puzzle for DC Charlie Peace and his superior, Detective Superintendent Oddie. But before long the puzzle that most concerns them is the nature of the close-knit artistic community where Declan O’Hearn had acted as odd-job boy. The little knot of people seem united less by their ability as painters than by a common worship of the distinguished artist Ranulph Byatt, who seems to prefer the adulation of his inferiors to the judgement of his equals. Peace soon starts to wonder if there isn’t a sinister reason for this. And as the search for the killer gathers pace, Peace and Oddie uncover a series of dark secrets in the harsh Haworth landscape.

Inspector Perry Trethowan reads in the obituaries that his estranged father has died under peculiar circumstances: 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.

Assigned as British Princess Helena’s personal bodyguard, Scotland Yard Detective Perry Trethowan struggles to defend his own virtue against the lascivious princess while tracking down the methodical killer who is murdering her numerous lovers.

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.

Radio Broadwich decides to do a documentary on the small village of Twytching for international broadcast, and the townspeople divide between those who seek the patronage of Mrs. Deborah Withins, arbiter of taste and morals, and those determined to displace her in the cutthroat contest for media recognition. When a rash of poison-pen letters and a murder coincide, quiet inspector George Parrish begins to uncover secrets the leading citizens of Twytching had thought, and fervently hoped, were buried.

The Burleigh school was dying. It would be called a mercy killing were it not for the little band of inept, eccentric, or otherwise unemployable teachers who depended on this absolutely awful English boys' academy for their meagre livelihoods. A lack of funds, facilities, and foresight had brought Burleigh to the very edge of extinction. Now someone planned to give it one final, deadly push. Malice was afoot behind the ivied walls, trailing hard on the heels of Hilary Frome, Headmaster Crumwallis's unfortunate choice for the next headboy. For when something sinister popped up in the punch on Parents' Evening, when nasty pranks became no joke, the next event at bloody Burleigh was bound to be . . . simply murder. 'Crackerjack entertainment . . . deserves the kind of raves heaped up on his other prize whodunits.' "Publishers Weekly" 'There is no one quite like Robert Barnard in his ability to combine chills and chuckles and to sprinkle the whole with delicious irony.' "San Diego Union" 'The wryest wit and most scathing satire in today's mystery.' "Chicago Sun-Times"

Chetton Hall was one of the glories of Jacobean domestic architecture, and the Spenders had lived in Chetton ever since their founder had peculated the money to build it while he was the King’s Secretary of Monopolies. Over the years they had accumulated accrustations of dignity, to say nothing of wealth. Which made it doubly shocking when the Earldom descended to Percy Spender, who was ‘not quite’, not to mention his family, who were not at all. When the family descends on Chetton for his sixtieth birthday, accompanied by various hangers-on, their main obsession is to discover his intentions for the future of the place. Hardly less interested is his man of business, and his neighbours, who feel sadly the diminished glory of the house. The Spenders, in fact, have always felt like birds in a guilded cage at Chetton. Before the celebrations are over, one of the birds is a very dead duck indeed. The traditional country house party murder is turned on its head, given a few twists, and ends up much reinvigorated in this witty and lively whodunit by a writer who, as described in The Times Literary Supplement, ‘can write most under the table with one hand behind his back.’ ‘Mr Barnard always maintains an exceptionally high level, being as much littérateur as mystery story writer; fortunately, he never lets his literary flair get in the way of his mysteries.’ New York Times Book Review

Rosemary Sheffield has a sort of "reverse epiphany" one day while walking in the park: she no longer believes in God. This sudden loss of faith is at first entirely liberating, but the situation gradually becomes more complicated. Rosemary is, after all, the beloved wife of the vicar at St. Saviour's parish. A storm of controversy erupts in her husband's church congregation, but Rosemary, with the words "I do not believe," leaves behind the scandal and gossip for a seaside sojourn in Scarborough. Here she meets Stanko, a Bosnian refugee who illegally entered the country. But what begins as a supportive friendship launches an ungodly chain of events-and Rosemary soon finds herself back at home caught up in a murder investigation. "Barnard's trademark seamless plotting and riotous sense of humor stand out wonderfully in his latest whodunit." "Booklist" "His plots are downright Mozartian in their effortless complexity" "New York Newsday"

The disappearance from school of two apparently unconnected teenagers worries DC Charlie Peace, until he discovers that they are both working at a hostel for homeless street kids. Peace knows the life and crimes of the people these two are trying to help, and decides that, for the moment, they are safe. But will Peace have cause to regret his decision? After all, just who is the man running the hostel? And how nasty is the local opposition to the place likely to become? As the pair continue their good work, the situation at the hostel becomes even more fraught with the appearance of an Asian girl fleeing an arranged marriage. And it isn't long before a murderous attack seems about to put an end to the whole project. 'Nicely drawn characters' "Irish Times" 'Very appealing. . .sensitively written' "Evening Standard" 'He plots a mystery as well as any writer alive' "Time" Magazine

Those two days in May seem to be a highpoint in Colin Pinnock’s life: a stunning election victory, a new government, and junior office for himself. But among the many congratulations he receives is one hostile message, a grubby card asking, ‘Who do you think you are?’ Is this merely someone putting him back in his place, or do the words have a more profound meaning? And who, indeed, is he? Who were his real parents? As Colin investigates these questions he is led back in time to an old political scandal: a murder case which led to a politician’s downfall and disappearance. Events in the present, however, start tangling with those of the past, and he finds himself the object of a series of incidents that at first seem designed to bring down his career with ridicule, but later actually threaten his life. A beautifully written and intriguing mystery form one of our foremost crime writers. ‘Robert Barnard has the habit of delighting his readers’ Sunday Times

A new mystery set at one of England's stately homes and featuring beloved Yorkshire cop, Charlie Peace. By Diamond Dagger award winner Robert Barnard.

Sarah Jane Fearing has grown up in the imposing rural mansion of one of England's most influential banking families. At the centre of Sarah's world is her uncle, Frank, who has escaped the straitjacket of ponderous respectability. Frank offers Sarah hope, until his extravagant lifestyle leads him into a disastrous marriage.

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.

Newly promoted Inspector Charlie Peace must discover who murdered his detested father-in-law--and his pregnant wife is the prime suspect!

It can be a bit of an embarrassment when your old man is done in. Particularly, when you are a rising inspector with CID, and hated his guts. Particularly, when your old man was at the time subjecting himself to a do-it-yourself version of a Spanish Inquisition torture. And wearing spangled tights. What it meant was that Perry Trethowan had to go back to the home of his ancestors and do a bit of semi-official sleuthing. Like the Sitwells and the Mitfords, the Trethowans proved that Birth and Artistic Talent could go together. The Trethowans, though, made one hope it didn't happen too often. Perry's father had been a dilettante composer so minor that he stopped composing long before he started decomposing. His Uncle Lawrence, head of the family, was a poet of sorts, one of his aunts a stage designer, another an overgrown schoolgirl who had never grown out of her Thirties crush on Adolf Hitler. And that's only the older generation. Perry goes with fear and trembling back into the lions' den, and finds that his worst forebodings are mere shadows of the grisly reality.

From Robert Barnard, the internationally acclaimed Diamond Dagger-winning crime writer . . . Some memories are better left buried in the past. Well-known author Graham Broadbent has managed to repress one particularly dangerous memory for many years, but a trip home to a school reunion brings back the shocking reality of a desperate youthful passion. It all begins with a knock on Graham's hotel door. His visitor is nineteen-year-old Christa, who read in the newspaper that he would be in town. She introduces herself as his long-lost daughter. His daughter? It's true that many years ago Graham had a fling with Christa's mother, an exquisitely alluring school actress named Peggy Somers. The dates don't work, though. Graham maintains he was out of the country when Christa was conceived. He couldn't be her father. He's almost sorry that he can't claim Christa, a lively young woman who intrigues him in a strange way. And what about Christa's mother, the formidable Peggy, who made such an impression when she portrayed Saint Joan in the school play all those years ago? Why would she have lied to Christa about her paternity? Why name Graham as the girl's father? Separated from his wife, at loose ends in his writing, Graham takes the fateful step of searching out Peggy. It's a big mistake. Peggy's life, which started with such promise, has been a major disappointment. Now it's about to become a disaster. Peggy lies. She fabricates. She fantasizes. She is the kind of person who will destroy Graham if he lets her. As Graham finds himself drawn increasingly into the turmoil surrounding this woman and her children, he must deal with deception and, ultimately, with murder. The sins of the past return to haunt the living, and the lives of those who survive will never be the same. Writing with the piercing insight and wit for which he is renowned, Robert Barnard creates a poignant masterpiece of mystery, as thoughtful as it is entertaining.

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.