A Hovering of Vultures - Hardcover

Scotland Yard is keeping tabs on suave, wily antique-book dealer Gerald Suzman, involved in several lucrative literary scams over the years and now the creator of the Sneddon Fellowship, celebrating the novels of Susannah Sneddon. The Fellowship's center is the bleak farmhouse in West Yorkshire where, 50 years ago, Susannah and her brother, Joshua, who also wrote--unsuccessfully- -perished by murder and suicide. Now Suzman, capitalizing on and feeding the renewed interest in Sneddon's work, has invited fans to a weekend in the village of Micklewike, where some locals still remember the reclusive pair. The Yard sends low-key detective Charlie Peace (Fatal Attachment, etc.) as an undercover observer, and he meets some odd and interesting guests--crisply likable 70- ish Lettie Farraday, whose still living mother cleaned house for the slovenly Susannah; very distant relative Randolph Sneddon--who knows nothing but valiantly fields questions; the unattractive Potter-Hodges, who owns a collection of Susannah's letters to an old friend; beautiful blond Gillian Parkin, who's writing a thesis on Susannah; and a host of others. All goes swimmingly--with much talk of new editions and rehashing of old gossip--until Suzman is found bludgeoned to death in his nearby cottage.... A lot of dull alibi-searching will take place before the killer is tagged, but that's scarcely Barnard's focus in this leisurely, occasionally sluggish ramble through the byways of minor literary fame and fortune. He has fun with the poseurs and aspirers--and so will the reader. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Detective Constable Peace of the West Yorkshire CID is set on a "watching brief" by Scotland Yard to learn what new scheme the shady--at least--Gerald Suzman has hatched. Suzman is promoting interest in the writings of Susannah and Joshua Sneddon, a sister and brother who died in a 1932 murder-suicide, by promoting the Sneddon Fellowship, which seems no more than a glorified fan club. Charlie Peace, as undercover as a Cockney-born black cop can be, joins the first weekend meeting of the group and after two days of polite snooping still can't figure out what the scam is. Then Suzman is found bludgeoned to death in his remote cottage and Charlie, joined by Detective Superintendent Oddie, drops his cover. An Americanized widow who'd known the Sneddons, a distant Sneddon cousin, a mysterious Norwegian scholar and various locals figure in this fine, literate puzzler. Oddie and Peace uncover plans mixing sex and money in England and neo-Nazism and money in Norway before unmasking the killer and, maybe, solving a 60-year-old crime. While skewering literary pretensions, Barnard ( A Fatal Attachment ) writes a tale that is both cozily down-home and wittily urbane. Mystery Guild selection .
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.