Word: barnard
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...pleasures than creaking doors, cracks on the head or the discovery of a nude, blond and comely corpse on page 32. This year has already seen hard-boiled volumes by Leonard, MacDonald and Robert B. Parker at the peak of their form, and cunning British psychological thrillers by Robert Barnard, Simon Brett, Ruth Rendell and the American would-be Briton Martha Grimes. The fall has brought a fresh crop, mostly from other hands. The styles range from taut police procedurals to literary romps, from old-fashioned puzzles to breezily constructed thrillers. These days the detective may be a policeman...
...BLACKOUT by Robert Barnard Scribners; 182 pages...
...plots a mystery as well as any other writer alive, and he never takes the easy path of repeating a winning formula. Instead, Robert Barnard has worked his way, with freshness and originality, through the customary British variations: the stories involving academic life, the publishing world, the news media, stately homes, ancient titles, the royal family and the down-and-out. The only consistent elements in his novels have been precise perceptions and a larkish sense of humor. In Out of the Blackout, Barnard finds unlikely vitality in one of the most overworked subgenres: the story of an adopted child...
...narrative holds its quota of surprises, but draws its force from the shrewd characterizations, which grant Dickensian life to what at first seem stock figures. Barnard, a closet satirist, is at his best when reviling his creations rather than cherishing them, and there are villains a plenty to hiss at in this oddly affecting tale...
...Sullivan gallery, located in the South End, are glazed and fired, unlike the dozen demonstration pots he has left to dry in Cambridge. The majority of the work is finished with a cracked white glaze; the rest is dark and partially metallic, a result of the wood-firing technique Barnard sometimes uses. An assortment ranging from small white teacups to huge cracked plates is spread out on stands and shelves in the gallery. Multimedia artist Kelly Spalding shares the show, and her brightly striped canvases hang above the pottery...