10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
classic whodunit with a slyly nasty twist, August 11, 1999
By A Customer
Perry is a London police detective who has, to his immenserelief, been disowned by his upper-class family. The Trethowans mightbest be described as cut-rate Sitwells or Mitfords: a poet, a painter (long deceased, and the only one with any real talent), a composer, a set-designer, and a Nazi sympathizer -- plus their various offspring, all living in a monstrosity of a country house. When Perry's father (the composer) is found dead on a torture device of his own design, our detective's immediate reaction is: "That is just how one of my family would die, and just how one of my family would murder... I'll be the laughing-stock of the CID for the rest of my life." However, the Scotland Yard brass decide that only a Trethowan can comprehend the mind of another Trethowan -- and so, despite his pleas, Perry is sent back to the bosom of his family to find the killer among them. Although there is very little violence or sex in this book, it's still not your typical warm fuzzy aristo-Anglophile romp either.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoyable, although cynical and irreverent, with over-the-top characters, and unusual language., March 18, 2007
The mystery begins with the strappado death of CID Detective Inspector Peregrine "Perry" Trethowan's estranged father Leo at the Trethowan ancestral home, Harpenden House. Perry is asked by the Assistant Commissioner to participate in the investigation. This is an assignment Perry would have preferred to avoid. It is professionally embarrassing, as his 70 year old father was found dead wearing spangled tights, and although Perry left Harpenden House years ago, one or perhaps more of his highly eccentric relatives, still living there, is likely to be the murderer(s).
This somewhat bizarre story is populated by odd characters and biting commentary about Perry's relatives and upper class attitudes and practices. This is a well told tale that held my interest throughout, although it took a while to get comfortable with Barnard's idiosyncratic writing style, which occasionally, for me, intruded on the storytelling.
Barnard writes with an acerbic, tongue-in-the-cheek comedic style, using a unique choice of words and sentence structure. Two first chapter quotes: "...like all right thinking people I read my paper backwards ...", and "Certainly he would not have committed suicide: he never was one to do anybody a favor", demonstrate the story's humorous tones.
His uncommon choices of words and sentence structure seem more redolent of a foreign writer with an exceptional command of English, than an English-born and Oxford-educated author. Some illustrative examples are: "I began expatiating aggrievedly on a theme...", "Aunt Sybillia went into acidulated retirement...",
If your looking for an unusual reading experience and are comfortable with occasionally pregnant sentences, unique over-the-top characters, a humorous but disparaging viewpoint, and a more entertaining than mysterious story you may find this a surprisingly entertaining novel.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Robert Barnard's Own Favorite, November 3, 2010
I read that this was Robert Barnard's own favorite of his detective novels, and it's not difficult to understand why. His over-the-top characters had me laughing myself silly. The other reviews cover the plot. I've never seen a better example of a sane man surrounded by madness. A riot.
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