A City of Strangers

by Robert Barnard

Overview

For years the infamous Phelans, known with equal horror to the Social Security office and the local school, have lived in slovenly squalor in their council house in the run-down Belfield Grove Estate in the northern English city of Sleate.

The Phelans' infamy has even penetrated the middle-class bastion of respectability, Wynton Lane, where six imposing Victorian stone houses stand in fearful isolation next to Belfield Grove.

Wynton Lane and Belfield Grove have only their unfortunate proximity in common until the fateful day when the Phelans come to call. It seems that Jack has won big on the pools, and he's thinking of buying one of the six houses.

Nothing so exciting has ever happened on Wynton Lane, and the homeowners hope it never will again. Until now barely nodding acquaintances, the Wynton Lane residents call an urgent meeting to map an emergency strategy. What can they do to stop Jack Phelan?

What indeed? The Wynton Lane people have always thought of themselves as law-abiding, but they soon discover that malice can take on a momentum of its own, a momentum that can even lead to murder.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476733975
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	04/09/2013
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Robert Barnard was a well-established crime writer. He won the prestigious Nero Wolfe Award as well as the Anthony, Agatha and Macavity Awards, was been nominated eight times for the Edgar Award and was the winner of the 2003 CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for a lifetime of achievement. He also wrote crime novels under the pseudonym of Bernard Bastable. He lived with his wife in Leeds and had over 45 titles published in the UK and US.

Editorial Reviews

In this droll study of Yorkshire town life in Thatcherite England, Barnard ( Bodies ) dishes up the suspense with Christie-like skill. Something is rotten in the Belfield Grove Estate--namely, Jack Phelan, a member of the ``new underclass: riotous, savage, with nothing to lose.'' Phelan has sired six unwashed youths in order to get more beer money from the government's coffers. That his mostly illiterate offspring include a violent fascist and a child prostitute is fine with him. A trial to all its neighbors, the family is despised but tolerated--until Phelan wins at the races and announces his plans to share his presence with the middle class by moving to Wynton Lane. Not too unexpectedly, a murder disrupts his economic ascension--his own. With estimable craftmanship, Barnard has created a feisty melange of characters, none of whom appear brazen enough to commit a felony, making them all the more likely suspects. There's a mild-mannered academic; a fragile beauty who's spent many a year in bed snipping out photos of the royal family; and a supermarket manager and would-be yuppie. Sadly, the resolution of the murder is farfetched, yet almost forgivable considering the high quality of the rest of the work. Mystery Guild main selection. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Barnard furnishes another foray into an aptly described and often ironically portrayed village setting. Sleate, a Yorkshire suburb, is the home of the Phelans, an abundant and mostly obnoxious family of welfare recipients who terrorize their neighbors and others with violence, crime, and stupidity. When the residents of a nearby enclave find out that the Phelans might move to their street, tempers flare, phone lines buzz, and then Mr. Phelan dies in a set fire. The author moves easily and deftly among a number of well-limned characters and minor subplots, ending with a more or less unexpected culprit. Not quite as good as Skeleton in the Grass ( LJ 5/1/88), but entertaining and well worth reading.

Library Journal