Death of a Mystery Writer

"Death of a Mystery Writer" proves once again that Robert Barnard is one of the best British crime writers. It illustrates his sardonic and satiric bent, his wit and often bawdy humor while telling a tale that will have you guessing up until the very last page. His solution in this one is even more unexpected than usual. Sir Oliver Farleigh-Stubbs is one of Great Britain's most popular detective story writers, but he has a nasty disposition and loves to tee off everyone he meets and everyone close to him. He thrives when he sees others squirming. He knows which buttons to push and how to push them to achieve maximum discomfort. The monster in him seeks out targets for his sarcasm. With his long-suffering and patient wife Eleanor, he has three dodgy grown-up children, the drunkard wastrel Mark, the conniving Bella, and the drug-dealing rocker Terence. He has promised Bella to behave himself on his birthday, but unfortunately he gets a rude surprise as his main present. Important events begin in the village's Prince Albert pub when Mark threatens his father's life. A lot of people hear him and some report back to the old man. Miss Cozzens is the old man's secretary, and he just finishes his latest novel before the party. Inspector Meredith has to sort out the brilliant set of characters Barnard, as usual, has assembled. At the reading of the will, the lawyer has a surprise for everyone. To his wife he leaves the royalties to his novel "The Black Widow" which turns out to be a difficult book to find among his many successes. Barnard narratives move swiftly along, and the reader is swept along nicely. It's an intricate plot, but an engrossing one, and plot twists at the end are very clever and well executed. Another fine Barnard entry into his canon of great mysteries.

A classic, must-read book for the "cozy" mystery lover. One of Barnard's best (and all his books are wonderful).

This is the first Robert Barnard book that I've ever read, and I can't believe that I haven't sampled this author before this. He tells a wonderful satirical story and he does it with wit and cutting edge writing skills. This is apparently one of his earlier books, so I do think that I will be sampling some more of his work after reading this one. His nasty characters are many and varied, and he describes them in such a cunning and scathing manner that the reader almost gets to like them. We certainly get to know what makes these characters tick anyway. In this book a very obnoxious mystery writer by the name of Sir Oliver Farleigh-Stubbs is murdered dramatically in his home with his "loving" family all around. When Chief Inspector Meredith arrives on the scene he finds a surfeit of possible murderers. It seems that there were a lot of people that would like to see this writer dead. In the course of his long and varied career, he had managed to upset and anger many people. But Meredith has to sort through the motives and alibis, as well as find a missing manuscript that may hold the key to the murder that was committed. This is a very deft and well-written mystery story.

Surly Sir Oliver Farleigh-Stubbs, the author of a string of commercially successful mysteries, revels in making life miserable for those around him. When a dinner party at a neighbor's house seems to be passing with too little discord, for example, the author enlivens the affair by making manifest his uncharitable opinion of the crumbed cutlet set before him: "Oliver Farleigh sank into a mood of intense depression: he gazed at the cutlet as if it were a drowned friend whose remains he was trying to identify at a police morgue. He picked up a forkful of mashed potato, inspected it, smelled it, and finally, with ludicrously overdone reluctance, let it drop into his mouth, where he chewed it for fully three minutes before swallowing. Conversation flagged." After the cutlet has been downed, Sir Oliver invites these same neighbors to his upcoming birthday celebration, a family gathering regarded with dread by all concerned, not as an act of kindness but so they may serve as "diversionary targets." Given a lifetime, more or less, of his theatrical antisocial behavior, it is hardly surprising that Farleigh-Stubbs's death--he is murdered at the aforementioned birthday party--upsets virtually no one. (The reading of his will is a more emotional affair for the principals.) But which of the author's myriad victims was incensed enough by his abuse to kill him? Well written, and with an appealing cast of characters, Death of a Mystery Writer is another fine whodunit from Robert Barnard. (Interestingly, the last sentence of the book--or perhaps just the last, four-word phrase--seems as if it was tacked on as an afterthought, perhaps in response to someone's suggestion that the author's intent was not otherwise clear. But it was clear, and the ending would have been slightly stronger without the superfluous text.) Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

It's a mystery of clever intrigue, this "Death of a Mystery Writer" by Robert Barnard! While not readily available in books stores anywhere, the vintage Barnard (first published in the UK in 1978) is just that: vintage. What a delight it is to read Barnard almost anytime, and this one is one of my favorites. My local library supplied me with this one of his I hadn't read and I was, once again, fascinated with his story line, his characters, his style of writing. To say he has "a way with words," of course, is a great understatement.In this episode, Sir Oliver Farleigh-Stubbs comes up dead--a seeminly perfect inocuous death--the overweight--not to mention overbearing--author simply (right!) collapses while imbibing in his favorite drink on his 65th birthday! Suspects are a-plenty (as is usually the case with Bernard) and a real shocker arises when it is determined that Sir Oliver's son--who certainly hated him--is to inherit most of the family fortune. In addition, Sir Oliver's latest manuscript, quite invaluable in itself, is missing. It is up to Inspector Meredith to find the killer, as murder it is. Clever, though, the murder has taken his modus operandi from an earlier novel ("The Black Widow")by Sir Oliver.... This the Inspector soon picks up on, providing him with valuable clues.Fast-paced, well-organized, and compelling reading. This is a Barnard--if you haven't read it--you won't want to miss! There's no mystery about that! ([email protected])