A Fatal Attachment

A celebrity scholar in a small village tears her nephews from their immediate family and raises them in an atmosphere of cruelty, and when a grown nephew returns to the village twenty years later, he sees that his aunt has come full circle.

YA-- The author of The Skeleton in the Grass (Thorndike, 1988) has written another page-turner. Lydia Perceval has always controlled the men in her life, from her former beau, to her n'er-do-well ex-husband, to the nephews to whom she is so devoted that she usurps her sister's role as mother. Just as it seems that she has lost her power, two boys enter her life. Intelligent and friendly, they soon become her pet project. In fact, when Lydia is murdered, they are surprised to learn that she had not yet placed them in her will, while investigating superintendent Mike Oddie observes that her former boyfriend is not at all surprised to be her sole heir. The deeper Oddie delves into Lydia's past, the more he realizes that there was nothing simple about any of her "attachments" and that any one of them could have led to her fatal end. Combining the psychological probing of a Ruth Rendell story with the class tensions of a P. D. James mystery, Barnard creates a unique form of suspense novel. It's an excellent introduction to a prize-winning writer.
- Catherine Clancy, Boston Public Library
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A veteran crime writer with seven Edgar nominations, Barnard ( A Scandal in Belgravia ) here crafts another gem. Supt. Mike Oddie and Det. Charlie Peace of the West Yorkshire Police are in the village of Bly investigating the strangling of Lydia Perceval, 50ish author of bestselling "shapely, aesthetically satisfying" biographies. A cold manipulator, Lydia had alienated her nephews Gavin and Maurice from their parents, married the brother of the man she loved (and ended the marriage when her husband didn't measure up to her high standards) and had lately cultivated the two teenage sons of a sick mother and workaholic father. She'd even decided to leave the new boys some money before she was murdered. Oddie and Peace must work through the stories of the locals (a spooning couple see a bearded stranger near Lydia's house) and Lydia's kin (the ex-husband newly moved to a nearby farm; her sister Thea, still devastated by Gavin's death in the Falklands war) to trace the murderer. The book's pleasure comes from Barnard's easy use of police procedures, his subtle characterization and his eye for village color. Lydia is a delicious monster, and the ambiguous ending delivers an extra kick. Readers Digest Condensed Books selection; Mystery Guild main selection; paperback rights to Avon.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Prim, unflappable Lydia Perceval--a successful writer of historical biographies living quietly in the tiny Yorkshire village of Bly--seems an unlikely murder victim, but, as police detectives Mike Oddie and Charlie Peace soon find out, appearances can deceive. Lydia's sister and brother-in-law, Thea and Andy Hoddle, while maintaining surface amity, hate her for having years ago taken over the lives of their teenage sons Gavin and Maurice. Meanwhile, Lydia's ex-husband Jamie, newly returned to the district, knows she married him because she couldn't have his brother Robert, now a well-known explorer to whom Lydia has willed her considerable estate. In the weeks before her death, Lydia had begun the takeover of two new teenagers--Colin and Ted Bellingham, whose sick mother and clod of a father raised no objections. A lot of solid alibis and much conjecture seem to be leading the investigation nowhere--until Charlie comes up with some out-of- left-field inspiration that pins the killer. Graced with Barnard's usual ironic, literate style but short on the warmth, verve, and suspense that mark his best work (A City of Strangers, etc.). -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Barnard's new contribution evidences the same excellent plotting and characterization seen in A Scandal in Belgravia ( LJ 7/91). This time, his psychological study centers on a wealthy, highly intelligent, but condescending popular biographer who tries to direct the lives of two teenaged village boys. Lydia's first attempt to mold young lives--those of her own two nephews--ended unsuccessfully, and so does her new attempt: someone murders her. Chief among the suspects stand her sister and alcoholic husband, her surviving nephew, a wimpy ex-husband, and the boys' ineffectual father. Up to the usual high standard.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.