Tue 21 Sep 2010
Reviewed by Allen J. Hubin: ROBERT BARNARD – At Death’s Door.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[9] Comments
Allen J. Hubin
ROBERT BARNARD – At Death’s Door. Scribner’s, US, hardcover, 1988. Paperback reprint: Dell, 1989. British edition: Collins Crime Club, hardcover, 1988.
I do think Robert Barnard goes from strength to strength, though I’m not sure how he does it with his prolificity: At Death’s Door was his second novel published here this past year [1988].
His character probings are becoming more subtle, but his people, full of all their weaknesses and strengths, their humanities, leap off the pages in sharpest individuality.
In this one they are the family, legitimate and otherwise, of Benedict Cotterel, famous writer and rake, now octogenarian and senile. His daughter Cordelia, produced by the now renowned actress and once mistress Myra Mason, has decided to write a book about her mother — whom she loathes– and Ben.
She comes to the home of Roderick and Cordelia Cotterel — Roderick being one of two offsrping by an early Cotterel marriage — where Benedict is vegetating. Myra, hearing of the book project, comes furiously to the little British village with her latest bedmate in tow, determined to stop Cordelia in her tracks.
Into this comes murder, and Inspector Meredith (whom I’ve a notion Barnard has served us before) does some fancy footwork to identify the guilty. Barnard’s plotting is elegant as well, and he has yet one more surprise at the end for us.
Magnificent!
Bibliographic Note: Inspector Idwal Meredith did indeed appear in another Barnard mystery: Unruly Son (Collins, 1978; US title: Death of a Mystery Writer. Scribner, 1979).
September 22nd, 2010 at 2:21 am
I read this about fifteen years ago, and recall it as solidly plotted, though not his best. Barnard seems to have become more of a back number since the 1980s; I need to read some of his more recent work.
September 22nd, 2010 at 6:57 am
Ditto to what Curt said (though I read it only 9 years ago), including needing to catch up on Barnard’s more recent works.
I think his best are the non series books like Out of the Blackout, The Masters of the House and The Skeleton in the Grass, plus the short stories.
September 22nd, 2010 at 10:36 am
Have to make this a third since I’m behind on Barnard’s recent work too despite the fact he was a great favorite for a while.
I think in my case it was because he stopped appearing in easy to find American paperbacks — at least easy to find in my area.
For a while Barnard and Peter Dickinson were what I considered to be at the time the last true bastions of the old fashioned British mystery even though both were innovative in the form.
Guess I will have to dig my Barnard’s out, do some back reading, and then play catch up.
And who would have thought it, but I can think of at least one more series character named Idwal — Berkley Mather’s Welsh secret agent Idwal Rees.
September 22nd, 2010 at 12:49 pm
I might as well make it unanimous, so far, and say that I haven’t read any of his recent work either.
It isn’t as if he’s slowing down. He’ll be 74 this year, and he’s still putting out a book a year.
But David’s right. I don’t think he’s appeared in a US paperback in quite a while. Scribner still publishes him in hardcover, but their books certainly don’t show up at Borders or B&N.
Too old-fashioned? Probably. Too much detection, not enough “edge”?
He’s created a lot of different Detective Inspectors over the years, but when he’s not writing stand-alones, he’s been using Inspector Charlie Peace as his primary detective in recent years, the most recent being The Killings on Jubilee Terrace (2009).
Maybe this retro-review by Al Hubin is what several of us needed to point us in the right direction again.
September 22nd, 2010 at 2:54 pm
Steve
Do you know if he is still doing the series he wrote in which Mozart lives to an old age and plays detective? I think he wrote them under the last name of Barnstable?
Charlie Peace, eh? Nice touch of irony there as Charles Peace was a 19th Century super criminal, one of the models for Moriarity (with Adam Worth and Jonathan Wild), the man behind the Great Train Robbery, and model for John Clayton in “The Red Headed League.”
A typical Barnard touch.
September 22nd, 2010 at 3:13 pm
Barnstable is how I’d spell it too, without looking it up, but it’s really Bastable.
And as far as I can tell, there are only two books in the Mozart series:
Dead, Mr. Mozart (1994)
Too Many Notes, Mr. Mozart (1995)
I don’t think I’ve ever seen copies of either one, much less own or have read one. That’s a serious gap in my reading. Thanks for the reminder!
One good bibliographic source for Barnard is the Fantastic Fiction website, with lots of cover images, but as a caution, it’s not terribly reliable on dates and series characters:
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/b/robert-barnard/
Barnard doesn’t have his own website, but I found a nice piece about him by Martin Edwards on his blog:
http://doyouwriteunderyourownname.blogspot.com/2010/01/robert-barnard.html
One thing that caught my eye is that Martin points out that Barnard, Peter Lovesey and Reginald Hill were all born in 1936. And all three are going strong!
September 22nd, 2010 at 5:20 pm
I read the first Mozart book and the one non-series “Bastable” book, To Die Like a Gentleman.
Charlie Peace starts out as a Constable and sidekick to some of the other series characters but works his way up the ranks and has some of his own books.
Supt. John Sutcliffe was another series character, in A Scandal in Belgravia and Political Suicide.
September 24th, 2010 at 6:49 pm
There was also Percy Trethowan as a series character. He has several, including one, Bodies, I think where Charlie Peace was working under him. Then Peace seems to have taken his place. Peace is black, isn’t he (I forget his exact family origin)–so I suppose he offered a bit of a new wrinkle to the standard British mystery.
Barnard books also almost always seemed to have a gay or lesbian character. Humorous satire seemed to predominate (I think his closest Golden Age model is Ngaio Marsh), though I think he began getting somewhat more serious.
Back in the 1980s at least, he was vocal in defending the detective novel as puzzle and was a defender of Christie as well. His book on her, A Talent to Deceive, takes a much less patronizing view of Christie than what you get from P. D. James or Ruth Rendell, say. One gets the impression he would have thrown some water on the developing Dorothy L. Sayers Cult, which is now so dominant among Golden Age fans today.
September 25th, 2010 at 1:01 am
A TALENT TO DECIEVE is an excellent book on Christie and I think the first critical book on her to point out that her skills at characterization aren’t entirely subsumed by her skills at plotting, but complimentary to them.
While I’m a Sayer’s fan I find her work much harder going than Christie’s generally, some of the really good writing overwhelmed by awkward attempts to write seriously and an occasional nasty streak that shows through.
That, and Wimsey can wear on the nerves a bit at times — where we generally have a buffer between us and Poirot.
One of the things Barnard brought out about Christie was that often as not she is exactly as good as she needs to be in order to keep you turning the page — which is one reason that — at least for me — she wears so well. You can say much the same for Barnard, who is never as showy as Rendell or James, but never as heavy going either.
I’ve always found Barnard, Hill, Lovesey, and Peter Dickinson more enjoyable to read than either James or Rendell if only because of that. Not that I don’t like and admire both ladies work, but they do have a tendency — particularly James — to beat you about the head with how serious their work is.