Can you imagine finding a corpse at a romance writer’s convention?¹

Can you imagine going to a romance writer’s convention? Perry Trethowan, Scotland Yard detective, cannot. And yet, when his younger sister (who is probably in her late 30s or 40s) takes up romance writing after, in an earlier mystery, her husband is proved to be a thoroughly bad egg, and is too shy to go to the convention on her own, he is guilted into playing the good brother by accompanying her – just for the first few days, Perry, until I meet a few people.

The convention is in Bergen, Norway² in the spring³ and the cherry blossoms are in bloom all over the place, making it the perfect kind of place for a romance writer’s convention. Although the writers we meet in Barnard’s book are mainly obsessed with royalties, contracts, and markets. Perry and his sister are housed in a picturesque suburb at a large guesthouse overlooking a fjord.

There they meet a number of other romance writers, among them a South African man who took up writing romances as a job; a few American women who eke out a living; a man who makes his living writing about romance writers (and also writing romances); a grim mountain of a woman with a vast library of her work, accompanied by a quiet young woman who also writes. And Amanda Fairchild, who embodies the romance writer as personified by Barbara Cartland and others of her ilk. She swans about in flowing garb of purples and pinks, and hair just a little too blonde. A celebrity, she is often invited to open supermarkets, give interviews to newspapers and television shows, and speak to writers’ groups, and she is much sought out by her colleagues for advice.

One beautiful evening – it’s summer in Scandinavia, so the evenings last forever⁴, Perry stops in a phone booth near the stairs up to the sleeping rooms to call his wife. He watches as the grim bestseller and her companion ascend, followed about 30 minutes later by the South African and an alcoholic Finn.⁵ Most of the rest of the group descends to the bare-bones bar in the basement, to nurse their very expensive drinks and swap stories about being romance writers. Perry’s sister, accompanied by a former-monk now romance writer that she met at Day 1 of the Conference, wanders out into the beautiful gardens, where they stroll about, lost in the joy of falling in love, and oblivious to their surroundings.

Until the lovers discover a dead body down by the beautiful fjord, a sprig of cherry blossoms strewn across her back. It’s Amanda Fairchild.

Perry chases the looky-loos away and preserves the crime scene for the Norwegian police, who come off pretty well in this book, although it is Perry who figures out whodunnit in the end.

This book is really well done. The characters are fun, the obvious clues lead do not lead to the murderer, Barnard leaves a trail of hints that, when he reveals the final solution, suddenly add up. The murderer gets away with it. They know who the murderer is and, on the very last page, figures out the motive which is totally in character with the character. But the evidence they collect will never stand up in court and there isn’t even a possibility of arresting the murderer.

Off now to compare his description of Bergen from the late 1980s to Bergen in 2024.

1. If you believe mystery writers, it’s probably not that unusual. This is one of three murder mysteries, I believe, set at Romance Conventions. I’ll have to dig the others out but I think one of them is by Marian Babson and the other is, I think, by Elizabeth Peters (not one of her Amelia Peabody books). Or maybe I’m thinking of a dark fantasy/horror novel by Mercedes Lackey who was, in this series, another generations version of early Laurel Hamilton, before Laurel Hamilton basically became fantasy S&M porn. ↩︎
2. Where I am right now. ↩︎
3. Which it is not right now. ↩︎
4. I lived just south of the Washington-Canadian border for awhile and, one summer night, a friend and I stopped at a waterfront park which closed “at dusk”. We wandered along the railroad tracks and perched on a rock, where we sat and talked, listening to seals bark and buoys ring and, as the sun set, and the gloaming set in, we decided it was time to go. We wandered back and managed to get our car out of the now-closed gate – the parking lot was full and the ranger was kindly waiting nearby in the car to let people out – and only then realized it was almost midnight. ↩︎
5. Who also writes romances. In Finnish. ↩︎