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Bezig met laden... A Hovering of Vultures (1993)door Robert Barnard
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. Full of satirical references to culture vultures, Literary Societies, writers and publishing - including the fictitious publishers, Cowper-Hollins and The Untamed Shrew. ( ) It was Mark Twain who said "Write what you know." Robert Barnard who is a wonderful as well as prolific author may well have taken that advice because many of his books are about writers of various kinds. Indeed he wrote about 'The Death of a Mystery Writer",'The Case of the Missing Brontë', as well as about a historical writer in 'A fatal Attachment'. In this mystery, AHOV the mystery surrounds a long dead brother and sister who wrote dreary literary works that are coming into fashion again. There has been a push to organize the fans as well as set up a museum. Detective Constable Charlie Peace is attending a conference at the new museum because the organizer Gerald Suzman is known to the police as a con man and so far his motives for resuscitating the interest in the dead siblings is not obvious. Before things get very far murder enters the mix and Charlie has his job to do. Barnard's characters are so well drawn that the reader is engrossed in the story and and even gets to believe that the dead Sneddon siblings are real. I can recommend this book.
Robert Barnard, a former Professor of English at Tromso University, is Chairman of the Bronte Society. His more than thirty crime novels include A Hovering of Vultures (Corgi/Transworld,1993), which revolves round the murder of the Chairman of a literary society at its inaugural conference, the plot hinging on copyright and the forgery of literary relics. At "literary dos like this ," one of Barnard's characters relates, "you get all ages and types, but what is common to most of them is a sort of mild mania .... They've got themselves fixated on this one author, often for some odd, personal reason. Some of them hardly read any other author, just madly reread the one." Looking round the hall as the conference gathered, the Chairman reflects that the audience is"gratifyingly young" ..... By which he "meant that there were more under sixties than are generally found in such societies". Onderdeel van de reeks(en)Charlie Peace (3)
Susannah Sneddon had never received a great deal of fame or fortune from her novel-writing in the twenties and thirties. In the remote Yorkshire village of Micklewike, where she had lived on a run-down farm, she was now chiefly remembered for the violence of her demise - battered to death, apparently by her jealous brother, who then shot himself. That was back in 1932, and now there was a renewed surge of interest in the Sneddons, led by the shady publisher and entrepreneur Gerald Suzman. He had bought up the farm and formed the Sneddon Fellowship, with the declared aim of making the Sneddons' reputation as a kind of twentieth-century Bronte family. A motley collection of enthusiasts gathered in Micklewike for the inaugural meeting of the Sneddon Fellowship, including Charlie Peace, a young black detective constable sent to keep an eye on things. There was a suspicion that Suzman's motives were not quite as purely literary as they seemed. And when Suzman was found lying dead with his head bashed in, a surprising number of possible reasons for his death emerged amongst the group of Sneddon followers. Charlie and Superintendent Mike Oddie had to examine evidence both old and new as the strange case of the Sneddon literary heritage was gradually unravelled. 'One of the deftest stylists in the field' "New York Times Book Review" 'This story is a beauty . . . enlivened by Barnard's wit and his knowledge of the seedier side of literary affairs' "Birmingham Post" Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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