The Skeleton in the Grass

New York: Dell Publishing, 1989. First Dell printing [stated]. Mass market paperback. Good. 220, [20] pages. Cover has some wear. Cover states "1st Time in Paperback". Includes preview of At Death's Door. Signed by the author on the title page. Robert Barnard (23 November 1936 - 19 September 2013) was an English crime writer, critic and lecturer. His first crime novel, A Little Local Murder, was published in 1976. The novel was written while he was a lecturer at University of Tromsø in Norway. He went on to write more than 40 other books and numerous short stories. Barnard said that his favorite crime writer was Agatha Christie. In 1980 he published a critique of her work titled A Talent to Deceive: An Appreciation of Agatha Christie. Barnard was awarded the Cartier Diamond Dagger in 2003 by the Crime Writers Association for a lifetime of achievement. Under the pseudonym Bernard Bastable, Robert Barnard published two standalone novels and two alternate history books starring Wolfgang Mozart as a detective, he having survived to old age. Derived from a Kirkus review: One of the author's forays into the not-so-distant past, this story is set in rural England in 1936, with flash forwards to later decades. Sarah Causeley has come to the Hallam family as governess to their youngest child Chloe. Sarah is overwhelmed by the warmth, beauty, and intellectual focus of the Hallams. Dennis Hallam--book critic, pacifist, supporter of liberal causes--heads the household with charming wife Helen; daughter Elizabeth is about to ""do"" her coming-out in London. Disturbing the idyll is Major Coffey, who is instilling fascistic ideas into some of the local boys--and, fanning their unmerited contempt for Dennis Hallam's WW I record into a series of pranks that ends with the death of villager Chris Keene. Not until years later will Sarah discover the culprit in the tragic incident that changed her life and that of all the Hallams. Barnard's near-poignant evocation of a time gone by. The story has an ironic edge and the temporarily bedazzled Sarah has charm.