A Hovering of Vultures (Charlie Peace Series #3)

by Robert Barnard

Overview

Death returns to a Yorkshire village when a museum opens on the site of an unexplained murder/suicide where a renowned author killed his sister with an ax and shot himself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476737287
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	04/02/2013
Series:	Charlie Peace Series , #3
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Robert Barnard (1936-2013) was awarded the Malice Domestic Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Nero Wolfe Award, as well as the Agatha and Macavity awards. An eight-time Edgar nominee, he was a member of Britain's distinguished Detection Club, and, in May 2003, he received the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement in mystery writing. 

Editorial Reviews

Detective Constable Peace of the West Yorkshire CID is set on a ``watching brief'' by Scotland Yard to learn what new scheme the shady--at least--Gerald Suzman has hatched. Suzman is promoting interest in the writings of Susannah and Joshua Sneddon, a sister and brother who died in a 1932 murder-suicide, by promoting the Sneddon Fellowship, which seems no more than a glorified fan club. Charlie Peace, as undercover as a Cockney-born black cop can be, joins the first weekend meeting of the group and after two days of polite snooping still can't figure out what the scam is. Then Suzman is found bludgeoned to death in his remote cottage and Charlie, joined by Detective Superintendent Oddie, drops his cover. An Americanized widow who'd known the Sneddons, a distant Sneddon cousin, a mysterious Norwegian scholar and various locals figure in this fine, literate puzzler. Oddie and Peace uncover plans mixing sex and money in England and neo-Nazism and money in Norway before unmasking the killer and, maybe, solving a 60-year-old crime. While skewering literary pretensions, Barnard ( A Fatal Attachment ) writes a tale that is both cozily down-home and wittily urbane. Mystery Guild selection . (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The redoubtable author of A Scandal in Belgravia ( LJ 7/91) describes suspicious events surrounding a Yorkshire literary club formed to honor two distinctly unremarkable local writers who have been dead 50 years. Detective Charlie Peace fears an elderly woman's life may be in danger.

Library Journal

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

School Library Journal