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Book reviews for "Barnard,_Robert" sorted by average review score:

The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori
Published in Paperback by Scribner (March, 2002)
Author: Robert Barnard
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'Tandoori' is more than food for thought!
Robert Barnard is certainly an author with dramatic flair. His novels are always a treat--even an adventure--to read, as this prolific writer seems to know no boundaries when it comes to exciting, readable prose!

For example, "The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori" is a worthwhile excursion into Barnard territory. This time it's to Bronte country in Yorkshire (one of his favorites), more specifically to Haworth and its nearby community of Ashworth. A corpse is discovered in the boot of a car parked at the Haworth Tandoori restaurant. The body is clad only in underwear, there's no identification, and shows signs of grim mutilation. And it's in the jurisdiction of Detective Constable Charlie Peace and Detective Superintendent Mike Oddie, two policemen extraordinaire we've met in previous Barnard works.

The duo finds the body eventually leads them to Ashworth, a collection of artists, wannabes, and hangers-on where a young Irishman Declan O'Hearn had come to seek employment and has now disappeared. The body is identified as his.

Barnard is known for his stylish twists, his clever plot designs, certainly his way with words. His prose is generally salted with plenty of creative expressions and humor--in short, never a dull minute--yet at the same time, he is able to sustain a gripping suspense that makes it difficult to put the book down. Don't be surprised at the surprises, and Barnard knows how to deal them out and not put off the reader. He is a master at characterization and young Declan is well drawn, as, indeed, are his other characters.

Peace and Oddie are able to unravel this puzzle, mainly with good police work and with some luck, too. Along the way, we meet members of the Ashworth community who are clearly not who--or what--they seem, and the revelations of this mystery unfold, logically, plausibly, and with much certainty. In police procedurals, perhaps there is nothing new under the sun, but in this one, Barnard takes his plot designs and strong characterization and presents a novel well-worth one's time. Barnard's a good writer and in the course of his some 30 novels gives us a smart taste of Yorkshire and the Bronte moors. "The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori" is a delectable buffet!

(Billyjhobbs@tyler.net)

Another award winning novel by Mr. Barnard

In the British town of Haworth lies Ashford Farm which has many cottages located on the property. The residents of the farm have little to do with the townsfolk and viceversa. The only commonly known fact about the farm community is that everyone seems to have a cult-like worship of the owner, renowned painter Ranulf Byatt, an egomaniac.

A waiter going off shift from his job at the Haworth Tandoori finds a body in the back of his car. Officer Charlie Peace and his superior Detective Superintendent Mike Odie investigate and soon trace the corpse back to Declan O'Hearn, a former assistant to Ranulf. Through flashbacks, the audience learns about Declan's arrival at the farm and his growing dissatisfaction with the blind worship that elevated Ranulf to a God-like figure. As the investigators continue their digging, they find depravity that shocks even long time police officials like Mike and Charlie.

The mantle place in Robert Barnard's home looks like a who's who of mystery awards. His latest work, THE CORPSE AT THE HAWORTH TANDOORI, substantiates that he deserves his Nero Wolf, Anthony, Agatha, and MacCavity awards. No one will guess the ending or the revelations that keep the audience constantly in shock wondering what will happen next. The superb plot is brilliantly executed, especially since he leaves everyone sans the police officers as prime suspects. The audience will reread this novel on numerous ocassions to savor the special Brnard touch.

Harriet Klausner


Alimentos Que Le Hacen Perder Peso: El Efecto "Anticaloria": Foods That Cause You to Loose Weight
Published in Paperback by Magni Co (January, 2000)
Authors: Neal D. Barnard and Robert H. Brandao
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Easy to read plenty of common sense and Veggies rule OK
I know there are many arquements against carbs & protien diets and I guess all our bodies are different in their reaction to both of these. This book demonstrates that ultimate control of eating the right balance and control of carbs at the core of a healthy maintainable diet. It leans towards ultimate vegetarianism although for some the author realises this may not be possible and offers more balanced diets with meat. I guess in a nut shell what the author got across to me is fat contains fat and to much of anything for example protien is bad for you. Carbs in control are healthy in fibre, filling and release just the chemicals you need to improve your metabolic rate for a long substained satisfying way of eating rather then a quick fix diet. But remember a baegal is not a donaught another explained thing in this excellent book.

Well Done Neal !


Dead, Mr Mozart
Published in Hardcover by St. Martin's Press (April, 1995)
Authors: Bernard Bastable and Robert Barnard
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Could have been . . .
What a delightful historical mystery by the noted mystery author Robert Barnard, in his pseudonymous alter ego. He poses this question: What if Mozart had lived to a ripe old age and then found himself mixed up in murder? Actually, his Mozart is Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart. The book opens with the death of George III and Mozart is encouraged by a patron to believe that the upcoming Coronation might just be a splendid opportunity for a new opera.

Along the way we meet persons already familiar to devotées of the time period: Lord and Lady Hertford, Lord Egremere, Lady Conyngham and more, including an absolutely spot-on interpretation of Prinny, himself, whose estranged wife, Caroline is, of course, coming home to be Queen, and dear Prinny is busy trying to discredit her.

It seems that Mozart stayed in England all these years, dut to having once performed for a much younger George III, who generously and misguidedly paid the young artist 50 guineas. Father Leopold Mozart decided there were better possibilities in England than on the Continent, so they stayed. Thus, Mozart's son is now teaching music near Leeds, his daughter lives elsewhere, and lucky sister Nannerl is back in Vienna. (After all, nothing English is nearly as good as anything German or Austrian.) Mozart and his theater manager have a running rivalry with the Italian composer Rossini and several Italian singers, and there are numerous running jokes (or puns) about subjects for the new opera. Mozart leans toward the Merry Wives Of Windsor (think about it a bit); Falstaff, that fat, old rake, or maybe even Don Giovanni or Il Matrimonio Segreto. In between are jokes about the real music (such as The Magic Flute), Masons, and other real or imagined titles.

Actually, the only confusing thing to me was the music mentioned. Some titles are accurate, while others are merely a pastiche, and it is sometimes hard to know which is which. The chapter titles are frequently titles of known music by the real Mozart. Nevertheless, I truly enjoyed this book, laughing out loud on many occasions. It is a literate and witty murder/mystery, fantasy/Regency era novel, with much to recommend it!


Death and the Princess
Published in Unknown Binding by Collins ()
Author: Robert Barnard
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This ought to be in pictures . . .
Hello--BBC? Are you there, old chaps? I say, there is this terrific novel that would make an absolutely smashing episode of MYSTERY or one of those type programs which you all do so well.

Death & the Princess--no, no! not *that* Princess--by Robert Barnard just cries out for a visual treatment. There's this hunky Scotland Yard Superintendent with a bit of Toff in his history somewhere there, and a name that could hardly be more Brit. Peregrine Trethowan. Now I ask you! Of course, he's married (aren't they all) and has a young son, to boot, so he wouldn't be up to much in the way of hanky-panky, but still--that gorgeous young man who played Mr. Darcy in your recent P & P, would be ideal in this role.

Anyway, the Princess here is Helena, who is a many-times removed sprig of the current residents of Buckingham Palace, via her now-deceased Mama. Her Bavarian Papa, Prince Rupert, has managed to wangle himself into a position with the current Prince of Liechtenberg, and that entourage is about to visit London. This promises to create a bit of a stir, you see, because the Princess likes to have things happen. Especially when she's there to watch!

In her ordinary life, Helena is a charming young miss (rather reminds me of the second Miss Bennett in that aforementioned P & P) who cheerfully carries out all the 'meet and greet' type tasks assigned to her by the higher-ups, in exchange for which she has a 'grace and favor' at Kensington Palace. Athough the Royals don't really specialize, as such, it seems as though Helena visits an awful lot of places that cater to the elderly, and does it cheerfully, too!

She even manages to have a private life, of sorts. There's that young, and supposedly Honorable Edwin Frere, and the Northern Ireland footballer Jimmy McAphee, the MP (from perhaps the wrong side of the aisle) Harry Bayle, and the current acting sensation, Jeremy Styles (who once did portray the aforementioned Mr. Darcy) in the current batch. Oh, and let us not forget the reporter Bill Tredgold. Unfortunately, he's no longer with us, having had a gas heater do exactly the wrong thing while he was staying at a Tudor era inn near Shrewsbury.

Well, there you have the cast of characters, except for a short star turn by Edwina, Lady Glencoe, that is. (You can read all about her on page 136 of the first edition.) There's even a bang-up plot that comes to light when a old lay-about mumbles something about a threat to the Princess. I think you really will have to read this for yourself, old chaps, to see just how it goes together so neatly. And such perfectly delicious political satire thrown in for good measure. I can just hear that first-person narration now . . .


Death of a Literary Widow
Published in Paperback by Dell Pub Co (April, 1983)
Author: Robert Barnard
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DEATH OF A LITERARY WIDOW
This book is a pure delight to read --- has a marvelous sense of humor - the characters are well defined, the plot is a puzzle right to the very last paragraph and even though there is no crime as the police see it, a delightful justice is the ending!


Death of a Mystery Writer
Published in Paperback by Dell Pub Co (March, 1985)
Author: Robert Barnard
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Barnard pens another winner!!
It's a mystery of clever intrigue, this "Death of a Mystery Writer" by Robert Barnard! While not readily available in books stores anywhere, the vintage Barnard (first published in the UK in 1978) is just that: vintage. What a delight it is to read Barnard almost anytime, and this one is one of my favorites. My local library supplied me with this one of his I hadn't read and I was, once again, fascinated with his story line, his characters, his style of writing. To say he has "a way with words," of course, is a great understatement.

In this episode, Sir Oliver Farleigh-Stubbs comes up dead--a seeminly perfect inocuous death--the overweight--not to mention overbearing--author simply (right!) collapses while imbibing in his favorite drink on his 65th birthday! Suspects are a-plenty (as is usually the case with Bernard) and a real shocker arises when it is determined that Sir Oliver's son--who certainly hated him--is to inherit most of the family fortune. In addition, Sir Oliver's latest manuscript, quite invaluable in itself, is missing. It is up to Inspector Meredith to find the killer, as murder it is. Clever, though, the murder has taken his modus operandi from an earlier novel ("The Black Widow")by Sir Oliver.... This the Inspector soon picks up on, providing him with valuable clues.

Fast-paced, well-organized, and compelling reading. This is a Barnard--if you haven't read it--you won't want to miss! There's no mystery about that! (Billyjhobbs@tyler.net)


Detection and Remediation Technologies for Mines and Minelike Targets II: 21-24 April 1997, Orlando, Florida
Published in Paperback by SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering (July, 1997)
Authors: Abinash C. Dubey and Robert L. Barnard
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Good book !!
I think it's good book for you. buy the book right now :-) ..


A Scandal in Belgravia
Published in Paperback by Poisoned Pen Press (June, 2003)
Author: Robert Barnard
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Politics, Mystery, History, and Brits!
This is a very worthwhile little mystery read, very much like being in Britain in the company of political and government sorts without any special consideration being given to explain the asides to us silly colonials.

Anglophiles might enjoy this more than general mystery readers, and it helps a lot to be familiar with the history of the 50s and 60s in Britain. Even so, the characters are well-delineated and the situations speak for themselves, so fear not.

A masterful tour-de-force!
A SCANDAL IN BELGRAVIA is a very different sort of book, even for an author of Robert Barnard's excellent capabilities. Written in first person, it is narrated in a most engaging and chatty style by a former politician, Peter Proctor, who is (as are most retired politicians) working on his memoirs. But Peter Proctor was not just any politician, to be sure. He didn't rise very high, although he did achieve the status of senior cabinet minister, as well as being an MP for several terms. What sets him apart, however, is that, when his career began in the Foreign Office, in the early to middle 1950s, England was trying to get itself back on the right foot again, after struggling through the War, only to find itself engaged in the massive blunder that was the Suez crisis. Proctor had already resigned his post in the F.O., but was still shocked and unhappy by the brutal death of his friend, Timothy Wycliffe. The bigger mystery is why this death received so little press coverage. Tim's death also causes a monumental 'writer's block' in the mature Proctor, who decides to investigate the still-unsolved crime for himself. The book takes us back and forth in time, as Proctor exercises his memory as well as himself while digging for the facts.

Of course, it was Suez that occupied so much newspaper space, but still, one would have thought that such a shocking death, and one with such a propensity for scandal and gossip, would have rated more than the occasional one sentence it did achieve. For Tim was very open (for that time) about his homosexuality, and that was obviously the motive behind the murder. At that time, such behavior was very much against the law, and was an imprisonable offence. To be sure, Tim was the grandson of a marquess, but still--

Not at all impressed with himself, Proctor is by turns still naïve (cocooned, he calls it), prescient, dogged, and most of all, a man at ease with himself. A man who, thirty-five years earlier, could have a good friend who was homosexual, while still being very hetero himself.

It would appear that a young man, employed as an electrician by the BBC, Andrew Forbes, was labelled as the murderer, but everyone who will speak to Proctor, discounts that possibility. When Proctor travels to the US to, with any luck, confront Forbes, he finds himself believing the story he is told. Tim was alive, although battered, when Forbes left him.

With the help of his children, his researcher, old friends, and others, Proctor pulls away the layers of concealment to expose the perpetrator of the crime. By the time you've made the journey with Proctor, you'll definitely wish for more politicians in his mold, regardless of whether Whig or Tory, Labor or Conservative, Republican or Democrat. I promise you won't soon forget this book, especially the final few pages. Guaranteed to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck!

Robert P. Barnard has written a slew of books. To me, the only thing any one of them has in common with any other one, other than being a very enjoyable reading experience, is the marvelous writing accompanied by a very shart wit. The wit usually presents itself in different ways, depending on the plot and the characters, of course, but it is still ever-present. Hardly surprising, then, that he's won so many awards. They're all well-deserved.

For those who enjoy a thought provoking mystery
As a 30 year old gay man the topic appealed to me. Which is the murder of a gay man in the 1950's. I was not disappointed. This is a well written mystery and the ending is without a doubt one of the best I have read in years. My hat goes off to Mr. Barnard on a superb job. I hope he continues to write mysteries as good as this one.


Bad Samaritan
Published in Audio Cassette by Isis Audio (March, 1997)
Authors: Robert Barnard and Nigel Graham
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Barnard keeps the faith!
Rosemary Sheffield feels that she needs some time to find herself! The wife of a pastor, she has "lost" her faith; she has become quite disoriented. Off she goes on a seaside holiday to "find herself." And , once again, veteran writer Robert Barnard maintains his true-to-form style in "The Bad Samaritan." While at the resort, Rosemary meets--and befriends--a young Bosnian named Stanko, who's fled to England to escape the horrors of his homeland. Rosemary finally returns home and, anon, soon appears the young man, whom she helps to get a job in her town. Of course, it's not long before rumors begin. The rumors evolve into murder and Barnard's amiable pair Detective Constable Charlie Peace and his boss Mike Oddie are called in to find the murderer. Barnard's writing, full of dry wit, sharp dialogue, a viable plot, all combine to make "The Bad Samaritan" a excellent read. Barnard paces his novels with a brilliance that makes simply turning the pages worthwhile. Well-versed in literature and human nature, Barnard knows that "one good deed deserves another" and "love thy neighbor" are not always to be taken literally! (Billyjhobbs@tyler.net)

For those who like mystery and food for thought
The main ingredients for a wonderful literary feast: Take one Rosemary Sheffield, a pastor's wife who has lost her faith, add one young man named Stanko who has fled Bosnia and what results is gossip, rumors of scandal and even a murder. All of this is liberally seasoned with wit, detail and irresistable dialogue. The psychological suspense will keep you guessing what will happen next and there is just enough complexity to maintain interest without slowing the pace. Very moving, very satisfying and highly recommended!

The Wise Suspect Is On Guard
When a member of the Church of England parish of St. Savior's is found murdered following a picnic, the crime investigation is undertaken by Detective Constable Charlie Peace and his boss Mike Oddie. Charlie is a likeable protagonist who prefers working alone. The dirty tricks and vicious maneuverings of the people of St. Savior's remind him of his own upbringing in a predominantly black parish in Brixton. Charlie plows ahead seeking answers to his questions as he interviews people repeatedly. When Charlie acts friendly, the wise suspect is on guard. Barnard's twenty-ninth novel has enough twists to keep it entertaining and the plot is very tight and believable.


Out of the Blackout
Published in Audio Cassette by Soundings Ltd ()
Author: Robert Barnard
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Search for a Lost Childhood
I was impressed by this book. A young man, adopted by a loving couple, searches for his original family-he doesn't even remember his mother's name. Was his mother murdered?
Barnard is truly skillful at describing characters-the obnoxious Simmenters could almost be from a Charles Dickens novel.
The ending is a surprise. A very intriguing plot!

Barnard is in top form here!
"Don't kill her! Don't!" The young Simon wakes up screaming! The gentle couple who have taken Simon in are more than a little confused. In Robert Barnard's "Out of the Blackout," the author sets this finely-tuned and suspenseful novel during the blizt of London during the War. Children have been evacuated to the countryside for their own safety, more often than not to live for the duration of the war with complete strangers. Young Simon Thorn shows up in the village of Yeasdon, along with the other evacuated children. However, his name is on on list, his address doesn't exist, and few clues can be found in the few items he possesses. Many questions abound and Barnard, with his accustomed patience and logical thinking, sets out to solve this mystery. He does so in a touching, poignant manner, and he brings vividly to life all the aspects of these dark and dangerous days of the blitz. Barnard deserves his well-earned reputation.(Billyjhobbs@tyler.net)

A masterpiece of suspense and story-building
In "Out of the Blackout", Robert Barnard has woven a compelling story of how a boy,lost in the London blitz, finally discovered his roots in a long process of investigation and in so doing found some sense of liberation. We feel the slow unfolding of his knowledge of the past through clues which mark the story as a first class mystery. Only Barnard's "Masters of the House" comes close to matching this one in suspense. We passed the book from friend to friend all of whom felt the same as we did about it


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