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Death of a Mystery Writer
 
 
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Death of a Mystery Writer (Hardcover)

by Robert Barnard (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Book Description

From master mystery writer Robert Barnard, one of his early novels, Death of a Mystery Writer.


First published in 1979, Death of a Mystery Writer received an Edgar Award nomination for "Best Novel" of that year. It's with great pleasure that Scribner reissues this beloved novel from one of the most respected names in crime writing.

Sir Oliver Fairleigh-Stubbs, overweight and overbearing, collapses and dies at his birthday party while indulging his taste for rare liquors. He had promised his daughter he would be polite and charitable for the entire day, but the strain of such exemplary behavior was obviously too great. He leaves a family relieved to be rid of him, and he also leaves a fortune, earned as a bestselling mystery author.

To everyone's surprise, Sir Oliver's elder son, who openly hated his father, inherits most of the estate. His wife, his daughter, and his younger son are each to receive the royalties from one carefully chosen book. But the manuscript of the unpublished volume left to Sir Oliver's wife -- a posthumous "last case" that might be worth millions -- has disappeared. And Sir Oliver's death is beginning to look less than natural.

Into this bitter household comes Inspector Meredith, a spirited Welshman who in some ways resembles Sir Oliver's fictional hero. In Robert Barnard's skillful hands, Inspector Meredith's investigation becomes not only a classic example of detection but an elegant and humorous slice of crime.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Another fine whodunit, Aug 26 2003
By Debra Hamel (TwitterLit.com) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
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.)

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