A City of Strangers
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In A City of Strangers, Barnard creates one of his most memorable characters ever; the dreadful Jack Phelan. Dirty, potbellied, vulgar, selfish, Jack is a man everyone loves to hate. And the rest of his family isn’t much better. The wife is slatternly, the teenaged children flirt with petty crime and prostitution, even the baby is unpleasant. Only twelve-year-old Michael Phelan seems to have escaped the family curse, and it may be just a question of time until he, too, sinks to the Phelan level.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
