A Hovering of Vultures

August 30, 1993
Detective Constable Peace of the West Yorkshire CID is set on a ``watching brief'' by Scotland Yard to learn what new scheme the shady--at least--Gerald Suzman has hatched. Suzman is promoting interest in the writings of Susannah and Joshua Sneddon, a sister and brother who died in a 1932 murder-suicide, by promoting the Sneddon Fellowship, which seems no more than a glorified fan club. Charlie Peace, as undercover as a Cockney-born black cop can be, joins the first weekend meeting of the group and after two days of polite snooping still can't figure out what the scam is. Then Suzman is found bludgeoned to death in his remote cottage and Charlie, joined by Detective Superintendent Oddie, drops his cover. An Americanized widow who'd known the Sneddons, a distant Sneddon cousin, a mysterious Norwegian scholar and various locals figure in this fine, literate puzzler. Oddie and Peace uncover plans mixing sex and money in England and neo-Nazism and money in Norway before unmasking the killer and, maybe, solving a 60-year-old crime. While skewering literary pretensions, Barnard ( A Fatal Attachment ) writes a tale that is both cozily down-home and wittily urbane. Mystery Guild selection .

September 1, 1993
The redoubtable author of A Scandal in Belgravia ( LJ 7/91) describes suspicious events surrounding a Yorkshire literary club formed to honor two distinctly unremarkable local writers who have been dead 50 years. Detective Charlie Peace fears an elderly woman's life may be in danger.

Copyright 1993 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 1993
"As comfortable as an old shoe" is a somewhat pejorative expression, but to use it to describe the work of a much-loved mystery writer like Robert Barnard, it's sincere praise. This latest novel is Barnard as we know and love him--an airtight and original plot featuring characters recognizable as both distinct and "everyperson," and all wrapped in a pert style that makes the package doubly enjoyable. In this case, Detective Charlie Peace travels to rural Yorkshire to attend a weekend gathering of devotees of brother-sister writers Joshua and Susannah Sneddon, who in 1932 died in a murder-suicide incident. There's something odd about this convocation, and as we try to figure out why Detective Peace is in attendance in the first place, we observe him perservering in attempting to learn who murdered the organizer of the literary weekend. Roads point to fake Sneddon manuscripts and eventually, of course, to the perpetrator of the murder. Great fun. ((Reviewed Aug. 1993))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1993, American Library Association.)