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Death of a Mystery Writer: A Murder Mystery (Of Course) (A Scribner Crime Classics) (Hardcover)

by Robert Barnard (Author)

4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

Review
Publishers Weekly Barnard's positively ducky satire of the British whodunit will be lauded here as it has been in England. The author mixes humor and suspense cunningly, beginning with the character of Sir Oliver Fairleigh-Stubbs, wealthy writer of trashy whodunits...Sir Oliver delights in abusing practically everyone. So it's no real surprise when he falls dead...The story ends with a real bang. -- Review

Product Description

From master mystery writer Robert Barnard, one of his early novels, Death of a Mystery Writer.

First published in 1979, Death of a Mystery Writer received an Edgar Award nomination for "Best Novel" of that year. It's with great pleasure that Scribner reissues this beloved novel from one of the most respected names in crime writing.

Sir Oliver Fairleigh-Stubbs, overweight and overbearing, collapses and dies at his birthday party while indulging his taste for rare liquors. He had promised his daughter he would be polite and charitable for the entire day, but the strain of such exemplary behavior was obviously too great. He leaves a family relieved to be rid of him, and he also leaves a fortune, earned as a bestselling mystery author.

To everyone's surprise, Sir Oliver's elder son, who openly hated his father, inherits most of the estate. His wife, his daughter, and his younger son are each to receive the royalties from one carefully chosen book. But the manuscript of the unpublished volume left to Sir Oliver's wife -- a posthumous "last case" that might be worth millions -- has disappeared. And Sir Oliver's death is beginning to look less than natural.

Into this bitter household comes Inspector Meredith, a spirited Welshman who in some ways resembles Sir Oliver's fictional hero. In Robert Barnard's skillful hands, Inspector Meredith's investigation becomes not only a classic example of detection but an elegant and humorous slice of crime.

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Product Details

Hardcover: 192 pages
Publisher: Scribner; 1st Scribner Crime Classics ed edition (April 9, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0743229347
ISBN-13: 978-0743229340
Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 11.8 ounces

Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #977,157 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Citations (learn more)

5 books cite this book:

A Cry from the Dark: A Novel of Suspense by Robert Barnard in Front Matter, and Back Matter
Dying Flames: A Novel of Suspense by Robert Barnard in Front Matter, and Back Matter
The Graveyard Position: A Novel of Suspense by Robert Barnard in Front Matter, and Back Matter
The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori by Robert Barnard in Front Matter
Murder in Mayfair, A [LARGE TYPE EDITION] by Robert Barnard in Front Matter

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Customer Reviews

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4.8 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Barnard pens another winner!!, May 21, 2001

By	Billy J. Hobbs "billhobbs" (Tyler, TX USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Death of a Mystery Writer (Crime, Penguin) (Paperback)

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)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wicked satire on Golden Age Detection stories!, May 5, 2005

By	S. Schwartz "romonko" (alberta canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This is the first Robert Barnard book that I've ever read, and I can't believe that I haven't sampled this author before this. He tells a wonderful satirical story and he does it with wit and cutting edge writing skills. This is apparently one of his earlier books, so I do think that I will be sampling some more of his work after reading this one. His nasty characters are many and varied, and he describes them in such a cunning and scathing manner that the reader almost gets to like them. We certainly get to know what makes these characters tick anyway. In this book a very obnoxious mystery writer by the name of Sir Oliver Farleigh-Stubbs is murdered dramatically in his home with his "loving" family all around. When Chief Inspector Meredith arrives on the scene he finds a surfeit of possible murderers. It seems that there were a lot of people that would like to see this writer dead. In the course of his long and varied career, he had managed to upset and anger many people. But Meredith has to sort through the motives and alibis, as well as find a missing manuscript that may hold the key to the murder that was committed. This is a very deft and well-written mystery story.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another fine whodunit, August 26, 2003

By	Debra Hamel (TwitterLit.com) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

Surly Sir Oliver Farleigh-Stubbs, the author of a string of commercially successful mysteries, revels in making life miserable for those around him. When a dinner party at a neighbor's house seems to be passing with too little discord, for example, the author enlivens the affair by making manifest his uncharitable opinion of the crumbed cutlet set before him:

"Oliver Farleigh sank into a mood of intense depression: he gazed at the cutlet as if it were a drowned friend whose remains he was trying to identify at a police morgue. He picked up a forkful of mashed potato, inspected it, smelled it, and finally, with ludicrously overdone reluctance, let it drop into his mouth, where he chewed it for fully three minutes before swallowing. Conversation flagged."

After the cutlet has been downed, Sir Oliver invites these same neighbors to his upcoming birthday celebration, a family gathering regarded with dread by all concerned, not as an act of kindness but so they may serve as "diversionary targets."

Given a lifetime, more or less, of his theatrical antisocial behavior, it is hardly surprising that Farleigh-Stubbs's death--he is murdered at the aforementioned birthday party--upsets virtually no one. (The reading of his will is a more emotional affair for the principals.) But which of the author's myriad victims was incensed enough by his abuse to kill him? Well written, and with an appealing cast of characters, Death of a Mystery Writer is another fine whodunit from Robert Barnard.

(Interestingly, the last sentence of the book--or perhaps just the last, four-word phrase--seems as if it was tacked on as an afterthought, perhaps in response to someone's suggestion that the author's intent was not otherwise clear. But it was clear, and the ending would have been slightly stronger without the superfluous text.)

Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

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5.0 out of 5 stars A classic - and very, very funny
A classic, must-read book for the "cozy" mystery lover. One of Barnard's best (and all his books are wonderful).

Published 23 months ago by G.M. Malliet

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