Bodies

In this book a Soho photo shoot becomes a shooting gallery. In several ways this is an atypical Barnard crime novel. It opens with the grisly shooting murder of four people in a photo studio--a high body count for this usually cozy writer and a less subtle and less ingenious cause of death for him. The book has few bursts of wit and humor, fewer comic asides, fewer of his funny oddball characters, very little of his acerbic social commentary. He's left his light touch behind in the telling of this tale. The novel is single-mindedly devoted to bodybuilders and the photo magazines and films featuring soft and hard core porn. The book features Barnard's sometimes series character (in five of the forty books), Scotland Yard Police Superintendent Perry Trethowan who is himself a lapsed bodybuilder. It's a well done, cleverly plotted book, but one that doesn't prepare you for the solution with foreshadowing. The ending almost comes out of the blue. The book introduces Charlie Peace as a gym manager who in later books blossoms into one of Barnard's series detectives in the Leeds area. He works for the police "undercover" in the porn industry, uncovered so to speak. It's not vintage Barnard, one of his least funny books, but is still far better book than most writers plying the trade produce. He knows how to tell a story, hook the reader and carry him along smoothly. There aren't potholes, dull stretches, arid portions, digressions to fall into as you read; Barnard knows how to breathe life into a story and make it move.