The Bad Samaritan
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- 3,99 €
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- 3,99 €
Publisher Description
Rosemary Sheffield has a sort of "reverse epiphany" one day while walking in the park: she no longer believes in God. This sudden loss of faith is at first entirely liberating, but the situation gradually becomes more complicated. Rosemary is, after all, the beloved wife of the vicar at St. Saviour's parish.
A storm of controversy erupts in her husband's church congregation, but Rosemary, with the words "I do not believe," leaves behind the scandal and gossip for a seaside sojourn in Scarborough. Here she meets Stanko, a Bosnian refugee who illegally entered the country. But what begins as a supportive friendship launches an ungodly chain of events—and Rosemary soon finds herself back at home caught up in a murder investigation.
"Barnard's trademark seamless plotting and riotous sense of humor stand out wonderfully in his latest whodunit." Booklist
"His plots are downright Mozartian in their effortless complexity" New York Newsday
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dispensing with his tendency to peddle clunky social commentary in the guise of broad farce, veteran Barnard (Death of an Old Goat) employs detectives Mike Oddie and Charlie Peace to deliver as fine and as nuanced a mystery as we are likely to see all year. It's not hard to understand why Rosemary Sheffield, a vicar's wife near Leeds, misplaces her faith: she has to contend with a pompous son, a congregation full of rabid gossips and a scheming lothario in charge of the church's records. So she takes a much-needed powder to a seaside resort and there befriends Stanko, a young Bosnian refugee working as a waiter. When he later shows up at the vicarage, she finds him a job making pizza in town, after which things quickly unravel when a member of the congregation is killed. Peace is the nominal star of this tale, but Rosemary and her husband's diverse flock bring it to life as Barnard puts them under a narrative microscope that would do nongenre writers of the caliber of Penelope Lively and Margaret Drabble proud. Peace needs both his humanity and his cunning to crack the case, which involves bad marriages, organized crime and the smuggling of Eastern Europeans into England. Barnard, seldom less than excellent, has rarely been this masterful.
