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Summary
Summary
Master of mystery Robert Barnard, internationally acclaimed for his suspenseful, witty literary gems, cleverly mixes past and present in A Cry from the Dark, an intriguing tour de force sweeping from 1930s Australia to contemporary London. Bettina Whitelaw has come a long way from her childhood in the little outback town of Bundaroo, Australia. Many years have passed, a lifetime really, but she's never forgotten what happened there on the evening that changed her life forever.How could she forget the school dance, her taunting classmates, dancing with the strange but brilliant English boy, Hughie Naismyth? How could she forget what happened next, when, overheated and exhilarated by the music and the moment, she wandered off alone into a secluded, wooded area? Now a renowned, elderly author living in London's elegant Holland Park, Bettina faces a flood of memories as she works on her memoirs, even though her focus is more on the frightening things that are happening today. Someone has recently entered her home and gone through her desk. The intruder is clearly not an ordinary burglar. It must be someone she knows. She's been a little lax in handing out keys, so the suspects are many -- her nephew, Mark; her agent, Clare; her friends, Peter or Katie. Or it could be someone else.What does Bettina possess that this person would want to steal? A puzzle that at first seems mildly disturbing soon turns deadly serious. Someone is willing to kill -- but why? Does the answer rest in Bundaroo or nearer to home? A Cry from the Dark shows us vintage Robert Barnard as he slyly lays the clues that lead to his trademark surprise -- and poignant -- ending.
Author Notes
Robert Barnard 1936-2013
Robert Barnard was born in Essex, England on November 23, 1936. He read English at Balliol College, Oxford. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, he was a professor. His first novel, Death of an Old Goat, was published in 1974. During his lifetime, he wrote more than 40 books including A Cry from the Dark, The Bones in the Attic, Posthumous Papers, Death in a Cold Climate, Sheer Torture, Political Suicide, The Missing Brontë, The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori, and A Charitable Body. He also wrote an illustrated biography of Emily Brontë and A Brontë Encyclopedia, compiled with Louise Barnard. He received numerous awards including the Nero Wolfe, Anthony, Agatha, Edgar and Macavity Awards. In 2003, he won the CWA Diamond Dagger Award for a lifetime of achievement. He died on September 19, 2013 at the age of 76.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Prolific British author Barnard (The Mistress of Alderley, etc.) offers a slow-to-start but strong-to-finish thriller set somewhat confusingly in both rural 1930s Australia and contemporary England. Eighty-year-old Bettina (once Betty) Whitelaw is an acclaimed London writer whose semi-autobiographical novels take place in the Outback settlement of Bundaroo, the desolate town she left behind forever after being raped in her teens one summer night by an unknown assailant. Occasionally endearing, but more often emotionally empty, Bettina now finds herself threatened by the distant past when the ransacking of her flat and an assault on her maid Katie suggest that vindictive former acquaintances, fearful of what she may be writing about them, have pursued her to England. An odd assortment of ex-friends and lovers, plus several family members, including her "unacknowledged daughter" Sylvia (the offspring of Bettina's brief marriage to a British army officer), arrive in London to create an intriguing collection of suspects in what soon becomes a murder case. With abrupt time and place transitions and obscure chapter titles, we are led through a complicated series of ever-more-suspenseful incidents that build to a semi-tragic, though largely predictable, finale that will play on the reader's emotions if not Bettina's. (Feb. 17) FYI: Barnard has won Anthony, Agatha and Macavity awards, and in 2003 received the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
An elderly London memoirist recalls her present on graduating from the Australian outback: rape. In her 80 years, Bettina Whitelaw has had many successes, including a passel of well-received novels whose acerbic send-ups of thinly veiled real people have won her a lovely flat in Holland Park Crescent filled with Aboriginal art. But there have also been a few glitches along the way, including a wartime marriage that ended in quick divorce and unwanted pregnancy and, still further back, a sexual assault that sent her scurrying from rural Bundaroo to her auntie in Armidale, then on to Sydney, and finally off to London. Now, as she's dredging up her past for literary fodder, her brother Oliver, his son Mark, and the daughter she set out for adoption over 50 years ago all descend on her from Australia. Hughie, the pommy London aesthete who's the only friend she's kept from her youth, drones on that they all want her money. But someone who wants even more breaks into her flat, putting her former housekeeper into a coma and absconding with a piece of well-publicized Aboriginal art. Is the motive greed? Payback for dysfunctional mothering? Or a plan to smash those memoir tapes and evade responsibility for that ancient rape? Below par for the usually dexterous Barnard (The Mistress of Alderley, p. 271, etc.), with surprisingly heavy-handed attempts at misdirection, although the 1930s outback sequences will keep you reading. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
A taut and elegantly pitched mystery from a master's hand. Well-respected London writer Bettina Whitelaw is a tough old lady in her eighties. Her story spirals from the present, where her agent and everyone else want to know if she is writing her memoirs, to the past, when, growing up in Bundaroo, Australia, she knew she was too smart to stay there. Why Bettina left Bundaroo sooner than she intended unfolds like an origami puzzle. Along the way, we meet her brother; the child she had but didn't raise, a woman now in her fifties; and Hughie, who came to Bundaroo and also left but remained close to Bettina (after a fashion) over the decades. There's real intelligence in the unfolding, which begins with a break-in at Bettina's flat and ends with a murder. Barnard has created a perfectly credible older woman who has been shaped but not crushed by the secrets in her life. --GraceAnne DeCandido Copyright 2003 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Suspense takes a back seat to Barnard's trademark character development and knack for social observation in this nonseries work. (Barnard is also author of the Charlie Peace series.) At 80, Londoner Bettina Whitelaw, "mildly famous" for her satirical novels, is writing her memoirs. Intermittent flashbacks describe her at 16, too bright and talented for her remote Australian outback town of Bundaroo. She takes the opportunity to get away when a violent event alters her life. As this event-already broadly signaled-is revealed, more trouble develops. The woman watching Bettina's apartment while Bettina is away is brutally attacked and a piece of aboriginal art is stolen. Who was the intended victim, and what was the thief's real objective, Bettina's wealth or what she was writing? All the major characters are particularly well drawn-extremely sexually active oldsters, a cheeky agent, the rediscovered daughter whom Bettina gave away as an infant-but Bettina stands out as a woman who has lived life on her own terms, with few regrets. Her story, and that of her small hometown with its dark secrets, make this another fine entertainment from a much-lauded author.-Michele Leber, Arlington, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
