I’ve been mentioning Robert Barnard in recent posts about other author’s books; so I thought it was about time to write about his own books.

What I like about Barnard is that he’s so clever – and some of his writing is viciously witty. All of his books are different – although he has two detectives, each with a handful of their own books, about half his books have unique detectives. Some of the detectives are good; some are bad; some are professionals; some, I believe, are just nosy parkers. Sometimes they solve the case, sometimes they get fooled. In this one, they deliberately decide to arrest the wrong person.

They take places in a variety of locations, too. Some are in London, some in smaller British towns, some on palatial estates, and a few abroad, in Australia, Norway… This one takes place in a village – although the pretentious amongst the residents insist it is a smaller town. The village is “twinned” with a town in Wisconsin; and the action starts when a regional radio broadcast contracts to devote a show to introducing the British town to its American counterpart. The radio host, accompanied by a representative from Twytchings, Wisconsin, will interview a representative sampling of residents and then each resident will request a song to be played.

This idea delights the mayor’s domineering wife, who rules the village, and she immediately – without consulting the radio station – assumes the role of gatekeeper and begins playing her neighbors, who aspire to appear on the show, against each other, and to punish those she disapproves off by withdrawing her support. The town is a pretty boring place but suddenly the residents blossom forth with meals-on-wheels and quaint hobbies like quilting, determined to earn the lady mayoress’s approval.

One exception is the local ice queen, who emerges from her flawless home and out of her minutely manicured garden, perfectly dressed and coiffed, to glide through the town, occasionally deigning to notice her neighbors, before gliding back home to don an apron just in time for her husband’s arrival home from work, so that she can take credit for the gourmet dinners that her 12-year old daughter has prepared. This paragon does a little research to discover the name of the radio station’s chairman of the board, visits the show’s producer, name-drops, and earns a spot on the show before the producer even realizes that the lady mayoress exists.

And this ice queen is the murder victim. But who would kill her? As one character reflects, “One never does believe one’s friends are dead, unless they are the dying type.”

What is the dying type?

There’s no shortage of suspects: the lady mayoress; the next door neighbor, an aspiring and unappreciated literary genius; the gossip-obsessed village shop owner; the painfully shy librarian; the vicar (between exorcisms and exhortations to give up sin); the perpetually pregnant young wife whose husband is often conveniently away at sea.

The detective – in this case, the local police inspector – pursues clues between trying to arrange a romance between his intellectually incurious male police constable and his talented woman police constable. Everyone says “condescendingly […] that he wasn’t much of a talker. No one ever said that he was a very good listener, and some of them would be just a little uneasy just how good a one he was.”

There’s a lot of Robert Barnard out there – he published over 40 books – and I’ve enjoyed most of them (my collection is missing a few). If you haven’t tried him before, keep an eye out – they’re a lot of fun.