Death of a Literary Widow

New York: Dell Publishing, 1988. There were two previous Dell editions [stated]. First Dell printing thus [stated]. Mass market paperback. Good. 206, [2] pages. Edge tear on first page. 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: Long-dead Walter Machin, a factory foreman who wrote working-class novels, is in for a literary revival, spearheaded by an American academic, Dwight Kronweiser, and by Machin's second wife Viola, now in her 70s, still voluptuous and self-centered. The Machin house suffers a fire that destroys Machin's papers, along with Hilda. Hilda's chum, schoolteacher Greg Hocking, doesn't believe it was an accident. So Hocking begins a search into Machin's life, talking to: Machin's daughter Rose; greedy stepson Desmond; Machin's publisher; co-workers; even Viola's first husband Gerald. All this sleuthing does indeed come up with a compelling motive for the fire and the murder. The mystery-making is almost secondary here--to Barnard's scathing send-ups of literary-world pretensions and his incisive character studies, unsparing and funny, yet always edged with compassion. Thoroughly satisfying work from an increasingly commanding figure on the detection scene.