A City of Strangers [Audio Cassette]

Robert Barnard (Author), Keith Barron (Narrator)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this droll study of Yorkshire town life in Thatcherite England, Barnard ( Bodies ) dishes up the suspense with Christie-like skill. Something is rotten in the Belfield Grove Estate--namely, Jack Phelan, a member of the "new underclass: riotous, savage, with nothing to lose." Phelan has sired six unwashed youths in order to get more beer money from the government's coffers. That his mostly illiterate offspring include a violent fascist and a child prostitute is fine with him. A trial to all its neighbors, the family is despised but tolerated--until Phelan wins at the races and announces his plans to share his presence with the middle class by moving to Wynton Lane. Not too unexpectedly, a murder disrupts his economic ascension--his own. With estimable craftmanship, Barnard has created a feisty melange of characters, none of whom appear brazen enough to commit a felony, making them all the more likely suspects. There's a mild-mannered academic; a fragile beauty who's spent many a year in bed snipping out photos of the royal family; and a supermarket manager and would-be yuppie. Sadly, the resolution of the murder is farfetched, yet almost forgivable considering the high quality of the rest of the work. Mystery Guild main selection.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Barnard furnishes another foray into an aptly described and often ironically portrayed village setting. Sleate, a Yorkshire suburb, is the home of the Phelans, an abundant and mostly obnoxious family of welfare recipients who terrorize their neighbors and others with violence, crime, and stupidity. When the residents of a nearby enclave find out that the Phelans might move to their street, tempers flare, phone lines buzz, and then Mr. Phelan dies in a set fire. The author moves easily and deftly among a number of well-limned characters and minor subplots, ending with a more or less unexpected culprit. Not quite as good as Skeleton in the Grass ( LJ 5/1/88), but entertaining and well worth reading.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Chivers Audio Books (January 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816175594
• ISBN-13: 978-0816175598
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,600,919 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Good Barnard, A Caveat or Two, July 17, 2010

By 

John F. Rooney - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A City of Strangers (Mass Market Paperback)

In "City of Strangers" (1990) the Phelans are a scary, notorious, disreputable family that lives in the Belfield Grove council housing. Jack Phelan is a permanently unemployed, shiftless member of the non-working class poor, a trouble maker and tyrant who terrorizes his neighbors and the populace of the town. He lives with his disreputable wife and their brood of six, all of them except Michael incipient delinquents. This is really a tale of the English class system in the Thatcher era and the warfare inherent in the system.

Not far from the Phelans is the middle class "respectable" middle class row of old Victorian houses that constitutes Wynton Lane. All families are dysfunctional, but they're dysfunctional in their own way. This was true of the residents of Wynton Lane. Adrian Eastlake, perpetual bachelor, fears Jack Phelan because he secretly harbors the notion that his mother had been sexually traumatized by him, and that's why she turned into a recluse, a pretended-invalid. Some Wynton Lane families and couples are undergoing relationship difficulties.

The Wynton Lane crowd really get shaken up when Jack and his grubby family come looking at the only one of the houses in the row of six that's for sale. The rumor is he's had a big win from the pools. The distraught respectable crowd have a crisis meeting to decide what to do. They are a disparate group, but several of the women hold back.

Barnard often depicts strong women who have trouble with weak and ineffective husbands. After you read enough Barnard, you rather feel that he has a basket of types that he draws from.

Daphne, the retired schoolmistress lives alone and has as her downstairs tenant, a young teacher Carol who recognizes talent in Michael Phelan. Barnard rather telegraphs clues about Daphne's nature.

Everything comes to a head when someone torches the Phelan house, and Jack gets killed. The Wynton people are suspected, and the oldest Phelan boy, Kevin, a rotten piece of work, spray paints that message on one of the Wynton walls.

This Barnard effort has an unusually large number of good people whereas normally most of the characters in his books are unsavory.

When it came to solution time, I think Barnard went off the track with a very complicated and not credible plot line that bordered on the absurd.

This is a good story with sharp characterization, conflicts galore, personality clashes, and a lot of good class delineation, a fine sense of place, but I just didn't buy his final explanations for Phelan's murder because the criminal machinations were too muddled and sounded phony.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Robert Barnard is The BEST, April 10, 2008

By 

C. Smith "gotta have books" (Ohio) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A City of Strangers (Hardcover)

Robert Barnard is the best mystery writer I have ever read (and I read a lot). This book is one of his best. His prose is crisp, erudite but never pretentious. There are always many plot twists is his books. But the most AMAZING FEATURE about his mysteries is that by the time he tells you who done it, you've met so many interesting, quirky characters along the way, you don't really care who done it.