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)

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

Well Done Neal !

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 & 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 . . .

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)

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.

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.