New Releases by Robert Barnard

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.

A coroner reveals a body''s tell-tale clues to his students, as he unwittingly dissects his own relationship. . . A breakdown driver turns his roadside routine into a quite different type of pick-up . . . Two creative writing tutors discuss the merits of hardboiled versus cosy schools of crime writing, while a murderous student points out that it''s really procedure that counts . . . The second in this series of anthologies from the CWA picks up the primary scent of any investigation: the modus operandi; the signature that identifies any repeat offender, the how that supersedes the why . From the ex-doctor tenderly administering a final prescription to his victims, the party of finishing school debutantes exacting revenge on their lecherous host... these stories demonstrate that, even with the most despicable of crimes, there s methodology in the madness.

Opera singers are often described as being larger than life, and certainly this is true of Gaylene Ffrench. Her appetites for men, for food, for attention are gargantuan, and her ability to irritate is similarly outsized. So when someone electrocutes the bombastic Australian contralto, few tears are shed at the Northern Opera Company. In fact, most of the company members are dancing a jig, and it falls on Superintendent Nichols to determine which of them might have helped Gaylene along to her just reward. With so many potential suspects, Nichols has his hands full.

In A City of Strangers, Barnard creates one of his most memorable characters ever; the dreadful Jack Phelan. Dirty, potbellied, vulgar, selfish, Jack is a man everyone loves to hate. And the rest of his family isn’t much better. The wife is slatternly, the teenaged children flirt with petty crime and prostitution, even the baby is unpleasant. Only twelve-year-old Michael Phelan seems to have escaped the family curse, and it may be just a question of time until he, too, sinks to the Phelan level.

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.

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.

Old church meets new with a vengeance when a monk is brutally murdered at St. Botolph’s.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A BRONTË ENCYCLOPEDIA “This lively, absorbing, meticulously researched compendium is a rich resource both for the general reader and for the specialist Brontë scholar. It contains much to enlighten and surprise even those who think they know the Brontës well.” Heather Glen, University of Cambridge “Aficionados of all things Brontë must have this encyclopedia on their desks. Even those with just a passing interest in Brontë or literary research can become trapped in this book for hours. Looking up one entry leads to looking up another, and then another. This book has references to the important and the arcane and the obscure, references to places the Brontës visited, people they knew; in short, everything.” English Literature in Transition 1820–1920 A Brontë Encyclopedia is a complete guide to the life and work of the most notable literary family of the 19th century. Comprising approximately 2000 alphabetically arranged entries, this authoritative volume: Brings to light the significant people and places that influenced the Brontës’ lives Defines and describes the Brontës’ fictional characters and settings Incorporates original literary judgments and analyses of characters and motives Includes coverage of Charlotte’s unfinished novels and her and Branwell’s juvenile writings Features a full range of illustrations A Brontë Encyclopedia is the most original and accessible work of its kind.

Hiding their father’s insanity after the death of their mother in order to keep their family together, two resourceful adolescents, Matthew and Annie, find their plans thwarted when they discover a body in their backyard.

In the Soho studio of Bodies magazine are found four corpses: a photographer, his assistant, an actress-student and a young bodybuilder. Perry Trethowan of London’s C.I.D. can’t discern a motive for the murders and soon finds himself involved in the seedy world of competitive body-building and a sinister operation behind Bodies magazine.

When the body of a Member of Parliament is found floating in the Thames, everyone assumes it is suicide, except for Superintendent Sutcliffe, whose investigation of the case reveals some nasty and ruthless politics. Three-time Edgar Award nominee Robert Barnard takes on the cunning and ruthless world of politics in this suspenseful tale centering upon the mysterious death of a member of Parliament.

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.

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.

Can the 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. What a pity that among the congratulations pouring in lurks one grubby card asking: “Who do you think you are?” Is this someone trying to put him down a peg, or is it someone holding damaging information? As he probes, he’s 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. Barnard mixes fact with surmise from an actual 1980s murder case to great effect.

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.

Prize-winning author Robert Barnard presents seventeen witty mystery stories featuring everyday characters who discover their potential for murder, including a young woman who weds a string of old men and develops a penchant for widowhood.

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 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.

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.

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’s love that left them screaming out for freedom. Lill set the hackles rising all over Todmarsh, the little South Coast town she queened over. She was just asking to be done in. When Lill was found garrotted on Thursday, on the way home from one of her boyfriends’, 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?

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.

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 headboy—sneaky sycophant Hillary Frome.

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.

A complex story dealing with forgeries, people turning up alive who are supposed to be dead, and literary hoaxes.

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.

A man’s home is his castle, but for Percy Spender that motto has been taken just a bit too literally. After the sudden death of first one distant relative and then another, the amiable Perce has become the 12th Earl of Ellesmere. And his home, no longer a cozy council flat, is now the drafty, imposing Chetton Hall, complete with more bedrooms than Perce can count and an army of servants. Frankly, all these fancy trappings make Perce itch. He’d just as soon sell up, buy a comfy cottage, and put a bundle on the ponies. However, some of his mates and family members have other ideas. And the sad fact is that an Unfortunate Accident can happen to anyone, even a lord of the realm.