Tue 28 Feb 2012
Reviewed by Allen J. Hubin: ROBERT BARNARD – The Skeleton in the Grass.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[2] Comments
Allen J. Hubin
ROBERT BARNARD – The Skeleton in the Grass. Scribner’s, US, hardcover, 1988; Dell, paperback, 1989. First published in the UK by Collins Crime Club, hardcover, 1987.
Robert Barnard’s The Skeleton in the Grass has not the witty bite of some of his work. But it is a brilliantly observant picture of a pre-war [1936] English village, of the social classes and their distinctions and varying consciousnesses of war and peace. It is, in fact, a masterpiece.
Dennis Hallam, scholar, book reviewer, a man who cares, who feels deeply, sits atop the social structure with his family, though he rejects such class notions and his pacifist views are not welcome in all quarters. Especially now, as someone (prodded, presumably, by the fascist Major Coffey) is leaving little symbols of cowardice around the Hallam estate.
As tempers rise, could murder result? In so peace-loving a neighborhood? This is a novel not on any account to be missed.
Vol. 11, No. 1, Winter 1989.
February 29th, 2012 at 10:07 am
This one is on my list of Favorite Barnards too. It’s a must read.
February 29th, 2012 at 10:31 am
I don’t know this book at all, but I gather its theme is far more serious in nature than in Barnard’s usual light-hearted mysteries.
I think that what makes historical fiction so popular is that it allows us to go back and take another look, another perspective, at our past. Even if we lived through it, we were probably focused on other things, and never saw the overall picture.
Here’s the review from PUBLISHERS WEEKLY in 1988:
“Remarkably inventive British author Barnard recreates England in the mid-1930s in this spellbinding mystery. Sarah Causeley goes to the tranquil country estate where Dennis and Helen Hallam live with their grown children Oliver, Will, Elizabeth and six-year-old Chloe, whose care Sarah assumes. Very soon, the young governess falls in love with the warm, intellectual, generous family. She admires the parents’ idealistic pacifism and support for the League of Nations. Rumors of ‘The King’s Matter’ (Mrs. Simpson) and the Nazi threat fail to disturb the atmosphere, but Will’s leaving to fight for the Republic in Spain is a blow. And more troubles loom at home. Instigated by a vaunting patriot and secret fascist, Major Coffey, village lads play low tricks on ‘cowardly’ Dennis, which culminate in tragedy: one of the boys, Chris Keene, is found fatally shot outside the Hallams’ house. The community believes the family guilty of Chris’s murder, and the consequences end an idyll for Sarah. The killer is never caught but is identified, years later, in a haunting episode that only Barnard could provide. “