Word: roberte
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...best mystery of the year to date is in fact a splendid mainstream novel exploring a theme that links almost all good mysteries with the larger literary tradition: the burden of the past. Robert Barnard, a specialist in snide japery (Death of an Old Goat), turns deceptively gentle and affectionate in The Skeleton in the Grass (Scribner's; 199 pages; $15.95), which focuses on the subtleties of the relationship between the teenage daughter of a poor British clergyman and the aristocratic family she is sent to join, as something between servant and family member, during the fateful summer...
...crime novel to write is the exploration of the criminal mind from within, the stream of psychotic consciousness brought to its peak in past years by Julian Symons (The Players and the Game) and Ruth Rendell (Live Flesh). That sort of book has been attempted unsuccessfully this season by Robert B. Parker, whose uninsightful Crimson Joy (Delacorte; 211 pages; $16.95) suggests that he would do better to return to slam-bang action. Symons and Rendell, meanwhile, are represented by more conventional fare resurrecting characters from some of their earlier novels...
...publicity barrage choreographed last week by George Bush's strategists was designed to portray his Veep-selection process as dignified and judicious. Much to their satisfaction, that is precisely what front-page stories soon reported: discreet phone calls to 20 candidates, quiet background checks by Washington Lawyer Robert Kimmitt, and no public tryouts. "George Bush knows all these people well," said Campaign Manager Lee Atwater. "We don't have to run a political Gong Show." But the process may soon get bumpy; Bush tends to waffle when faced with conflicting advice because, as an aide puts it, "he hates...
ELIZABETH, 52, AND ROBERT DOLE...
Only sentimentalists have ever considered childhood to be a kingdom of untroubled innocence. Today there is more trouble for children and less time for innocence than in recent generations. The problem is not so much that children have changed. The world has changed. Writes Dr. Robert Coles, a psychiatrist and author who has studied the lives of the young for more than 30 years: "Children have always been, and still are, a mirror to us -- ourselves writ small." Ourselves have changed...