Most Popular Books by Robert Barnard

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.

Matt Harper, a television and radio personality and a former professional soccer player, has just bought Elderholm, an old stone house in Leeds in the north of England. It's ideal for him, his partner Aileen, and her three children. Even the attic space seems just right -- the perfect place for a game room or a children's retreat. But as Matt and his decorator tour the property, they find something that will put the attic off-limits for a long time to come: a tiny child's skeleton that has clearly been there for years. What happened to the child, and how did its skeleton get into the attic? Detective Sergeant Charlie Peace and his forensic team think the child's remains have been in the attic for thirty years. Thirty years? Matt remembers that time. It was 1969 and he was seven years old. He was in the neighborhood, spending the summer with an aunt. That was the summer that Elderholm's owner left her house empty when she went to visit a daughter in Australia. What happened that summer? What memories lie deep in Matt's consciousness? Where are the other children from that summer who now, of course, are adults? Who killed the little child and why was he or she never reported missing? And who has now written to Matt, assuring him that he had no part in what occurred, that he had gone home to London before it happened? As Matt struggles to recover his memory of that strange summer, both he and Charlie Peace ponder what it means to love and lose a child and how one thoughtless decision can change a life forever. Richly evocative and deeply poignant, The Bones in the Attic is crime writing at its best from one of the great contemporary masters of mystery.

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.

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.

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. As Police Inspector Royle (who had never actually had to solve a crime before) probes the possible motives of the motley crew of academics who drink their way through the dreary days at Drummondale and as he investigates the bizarre behavior of some worthy locals, a hilarious, highly satirical portrait of life down under emerges.

When British policemen Charlie Pearce and Mike Oddie investigate the unsurprising murder of the village parish Lothario, they question Rosemary Sheffield, the vicar’s wife. Rosemary, who has recently “lost” her faith and been accused of immoral behavior with a Yugoslavian refugee, makes a perfect suspect. Another winning combination of plot, character, and wit from Barnard.

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.

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.

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.

Hexton-upon-Weir was ruled by its women: they set the tone, they made the decisions, they called the tune. When they decided to band together to block the appointment of a new vicar who was not only unacceptably High Church but – of all ugly things – celibate to boot, they managed to create merry hell. As the town was riven by faction and counter-faction, Helen Kitterage tried to remain aloof, but before long she was drawn into the maelstrom, as, during the down’s fête, ill-will and conspiracy degenerated into murder. Helen was convinced that somewhere among the secrets of this murderous Cranford there must be found some key shame that someone had thought it worth killing to keep unknown. In this tart and witty updating of the traditional English village mystery, ‘the chameleon talent of Mr Barnard’ (Sunday Times) is demonstrated once again through that sharp ear and eye that led the Washington Post to exclaim: ‘One of the funniest men writing mysteries today has to be Robert Barnard.’

Intrusion Detection Systems has long been considered the most important reference for intrusion detection system equipment and implementation. In this revised and expanded edition, it goes even further in providing the reader with a better understanding of how to design an integrated system. The book describes the basic operating principles and applications of the equipment in an easy to understand manner. This book was written for those security directors, consultants, and companies that select the equipment or make critical decisions about security systems design. Mr. Barnard provides sufficient detail to satisfy the needs of those interested in the technical principles, yet has included enough description on the operation and application of these systems to make Intrusion Detection Systems, Second Edition a useful reference for any security professional.

Award-winning author Robert Barnard, hailed by critics for his brilliant novels of suspense, proves himself equally master of the short story with this delightful first collection. 16 tantalizing stories show ingenious killers at work in cozy English villages, sophisticated London neighborhoods, and the darkly paneled walls of academe.

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"

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

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

Available to American readers for the first time, Britain's spectacular Crime Club Diamond Jubilee commemorative volume is packed with the best in suspense fiction. This exclusive collection includes devilishly clever tales by Robert Barnard, Sarah Caudwell, Reginald Hill, Charlotte MacLeod, John Malcolm, and others.

As handsome Dick Randall buys his young son Malcolm an ice-cream in a shopping precinct he looks every inch the caring father. But Malcolm's mother is sitting by the phone at home waiting for frustratingly short calls from her missing son. Inspector Purley is following leads that take him zig-zagging across the country after the abducted boy and his criminal father, following trails of petty theft and brief telephone calls. Identities change, new lives begin and even happy reunions are not quite what they seem as this gifted crime writer questions our assumptions at every turn.

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"