Customer Reviews

A Cry from the Dark: A Novel of Suspense

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I own every book Robert Barnard has written, so I am a big fan. What I find interesting in his books is that you can always guess what he's been reading recently. For instance, this book reminds me of Atonement by Ian McEwen, in being about an elderly writer looking back on her adolescence, which includes a climactic rape. There is also the possibility that she, as a writer, has edited her version of the past as a protection for someone or atonement for something.

That said, this is not your standard Barnard mystery, with deliciously nasty characters and a real puzzler that only resolves in the last few lines. It's more of a character study--interesting, but not a page turner.

Bettina Whitelaw, the main character in Robert Barnard's new mystery, "A Cry from the Dark," is an eighty-year-old woman of means. She lives in an elegant section of London and she has made her mark as a respected writer. Bettina has not forgotten her roots, however. She is writing her memoirs based on her recollections of life as a young girl in the Australian outback town of Bundaroo in New South Wales, Australia.

Barnard alternates between events in the present and the past. Much of the book recounts Bettina's memories from her childhood in Bundaroo during the 1930's. She recalls her father's struggle to eke out a living in a wasteland beset with crop disease, drought, and extreme heat. She also remembers her unusual friendship with Hughie Naismyth, an English boy who comes to live in Bundaroo with his family. Hughie is artistic and a little condescending to his classmates, and he becomes the target of bullies. Since she is fond of Hughie, who is a brilliant boy, Bettina does everything in her power to defend and support him. This makes Bettina a target as well. Suddenly, a terrible act of violence impels Bettina to leave Bundaroo and start a new life elsewhere.

Sixty-five years later, another vicious attack disrupts Bettina's placid existence and she realizes that somebody may want her dead. But why? Do they want to get their hands on her considerable fortune and her valuable artwork? Or do they want to silence her before she reveals long buried secrets from her past?

Robert Barnard is most effective in the flashback scenes that take place during Bettina's childhood in Bundaroo. Barnard brings the town's inhabitants to life, showing not only how close-knit the residents were, but also depicting their clannishness, petty rivalries, and small-mindedness. When Barnard fast-forwards to the present, however, the pace slows down and the book loses some of its flavor. Still, I give "A Cry From the Dark" a marginal recommendation for Barnard's keen psychological insights and his off-beat way of looking at the world.

Robert Barnard weaves a careful tale encompassing a long life but focusing on only 2 significant parts of it. Starting off in present-day London we meet Bettina Whitelaw, a successful 80-year-old author who is beginning to write her memoirs or, as she prefers to think of them, her memories. Through her writings the narrative alternates between the present and 1938 and the small town of Bundaroo in outback Australia where Bettina grew up.

Bettina's life in Bundaroo is marked by a significant incident, something that is only hinted at early on in the story, but which is revisited each time she adds to her memoirs. It's that incident that remains the focus each time the story returns to 1938. More and more is hinted at, teasing us with what might have happened before it finally gets revealed and talked about openly. (I apologise for being coy, hiding behind the word 'incident', but it would be remiss of me to reveal what it is here).

This particular incident is the first of two mysteries to be dealt with in the book. The second occurs in the present-day London part of the story when Bettina realises that someone has been in her house and has been searching through her desk. She asks a friend to house sit for her while she takes a short holiday in Edinburgh and is devastated to hear that her house does get broken into and the friend is severely beaten. The question in this case for Bettina is, was her friend's bashing a case of mistaken identity? Is her safety now in danger?

The story's mysteries really become of secondary importance, however. In both the 1938 storyline and the present day one, two unusual relationships take place. In Bundaroo, Bettina befriends a newcomer to town. Eugene "Hughie" Naismyth has just arrived from England and is like a fish out of water, unable to fit in with the locals. Also, his love of classical music and art consign him to a fate of being outcast from his schoolmates. The only person in school he can count on is Bettina who thumbs her nose at Hughie's tormentors and stands by him. The friendship between Bettina and Hughie endures right through to the present day and becomes one of the pivotal relationships in the book.

The second relationship starts off as a very stilted reunion between mother and daughter when Bettina meets Sylvia for the first time since she gave her up for adoption soon after she was born. Although both women begin determined to keep a formal distance between each other, they soon grow to enjoy each other's company and start to depend on each other. Through meeting and getting to know Sylvia we get to learn a lot more about Bettina and her life after Bundaroo. As their friendship grows, so does our knowledge of the two women, revealing their pasts to each other.

I enjoyed the way Bettina's life was filled in throughout the book. Although she was writing her memoirs, there were gaps in her knowledge of some very important events. These gaps were filled in through the course of seemingly unrelated events in the present day part of the story. Some people don't like stories that jump from one time period to the other finding that doing so can get confusing. In this case Barnard deals with the flashbacks to 1938 very nicely, smoothly switching timeframes and the way they were linked together made a very effective method of revealing her life to us.

I would call the pace of the novel measured rather than slow. Robert Barnard carefully constructs his story, adding one little clue on to another until the answer to the puzzle slowly dawned on me rather than being revealed in an earth shattering declaration.

Although I usually prefer fast-paced action thrillers or hardboiled private detective stories, this more sedate story kept me fully engrossed from the first page to the last. If you appreciate a plot that is filled with details, particularly where human emotions are concerned, then this book will appeal to you. The fact that there is a surprising twist or two near the end of the story is a bonus as far as I'm concerned.

I know what Robert Barnard was trying to do with this book, but somehow I feel that he fell somewhat short. The main character is an eighty year old woman who is looking back at her early life in an Australian outback and the book keeps flashing back to this. The setting is in modern-day London, but Bettina is rethinking her early teenage years, and an event that changed her life. Barnard tries to mix past and present, but it doesn't appear as seamless as it should. The better parts of this book are the flashback sequences. I had figured out the real culprit in all this early-on, and it didn't make sense why Bettina, who knew who the guilty person was, did not make it known to the police, especially when her dear friend is attacked in Bettina's suite. Anyway, Barnard is a good suspense writer, and the book is good enough to merit a little time spent.

She is a famous well respected author living in the heart of London but her roots are in the Outback of Australia in a small town called Bundaroo. She grew up there in between the two World Wars and even at sixteen her teachers and other adults in the community knew she was meant for the outside world. At her high school graduation, something horrific happened to Bettina Whitelaw and all she wanted to do was get away from the town she once loved.

Now in her eighties, Bettina is writing a fictionalized account of her life and the only person who knows the Bettina from Australia is her lifelong friend Hughie, a misfit she adopted when his parents moved from England to Bundareo. One day when she comes back from an outing, she realizes someone was in her flat looking on her desk. When she goes to Scotland for a vacation with her brother and daughter, the police calls her home because the woman who was house sitting for her was viciously attacked and lies in a coma. Bettina does not have a clue as to who could have done such a thing but believes there is a link between this crime and the break-in.

The heroine is a very interesting and complex character but readers will find it difficult to warm up to her because she has almost always put her own needs first. Robert Barnard uses flashbacks at times as a means of allowing the audience to see the heroine in the winter of 1938 and experience the events that caused her to become self-reliant, independent and touchingly vulnerable.

Harriet Klausner

Other reviews have admirably detailed the plot which oscillates between an Australian outback village of the 1930's and present-day London. The link between these two setting is the 80-year -old Bettina Whitelaw, now an eminent writer living in England, but originally from the backwater town of Bundaroo in Australia. Early on we know that something bad is going to happen (her friend Hughie expresses anxiety about the motives of Bettina's friends and associates. He suggests they are after her money.) We also know something bad did happen to Bettina in the past, a crime which bit by bit is revealed.
Neither revelation is meant to be particularly startling. There are enough hints leading up to each event, that it is apparent that surprise is not Barnard's intent. This would not necessarily be a bad thing if the characters and dialogue were compelling, but they are not. Bettina has a decidely unemotional sardonic personality which is pretty much matched by the visitor Sylvia who plays an important role in the former's life. All the educated characters speak in one way, all the uneducated macho characters speak in another equally predictable way. My other disatisfaction comes from the plot device gradually revealing an Event from the Past. It makes pleasure in the immediacy of reading subordinate to finding out what the Event is. This becomes especially irritating when the Event (a crime) and its perpetrator (named on the last couple pages) are entirely predictable. There are lots of mysteries out there. I would not waste my time with this one.

I love Robert Barnard's books and have all of them. This one is a bit boring, though. Lethargic is the word, I guess. It progresses very slowly, and doesn't have the sparkle and brightness of his other works. Mistress of Alderly is almost as bad.

So, my advice is skip this one and go read "Out of the Blackout" or one of his other wonderful books again.

This is a wonderful novel of character and subtle suspense. Robert Barnard is a born storyteller--my favorite of all British mystery writers. It's literate, nicely bookish, told sparingly but well, with well-developed, meaty characters, It reads well, yet the pace seems deceptively leisurely. There is nothing told which isn't necessary to the story. Barnard spends time fleshing out all of his characters with insights and some humorous pokes at human foibles.
Eighty-year-old Bettina Whitelaw got out of Australia, but can't get Australia out of her. She is a successful novelist living in London who began her life in a little outback Australian village that had little to offer for a bright girl of budding literary talent. Now Bettina is digging back into her past to write a kind of memoir. Part of her past involved a rape and a baby daughter that she gave up for adoption. She has stirred up memories that precipitate a murder, and she is carrying a guilty secret.
Bettina, the central character, become a fully realized person in this book with faults and good traits--a person with a life that the reader is able to enter into. Barnard has in the thirty-five mysteries leading up to this one ensnared me with his storytelling mastery and all of the literary microcosms he has created over the years. For me, a great read!