At Death's Door

By Robert Barnard

Upstairs, in the room looking out to sea, the old man dictates wills, leaving things he no longer has to friends who are long dead. His children, who look after him, can cope with his senility, and thought there was nothing more to learn about his erratic life-style.

When Roderick Cotterel hears from his illegitimate half-sister he is intrigued, even charmed: she is the daughter of his father, the distinguished novelist Benedict Cotterel, by the famous actress Myra Mason. She is writing a book about her mother, and is looking for material. The affair between the two had been a gutter press sensation back in the ‘sixties, but the embers have long since cooled. However, when Cordelia and her boyfriend arrive and begin research for the book both Roderick and his wife begin to have doubts. And when their peaceful Sussex village is threatened by a visit from an almost suspiciously friendly Myra Mason, they realize they have got into something from which it would require superhuman delicacy and tact to extricate themselves. In the event somebody solves their problems in a way that is neither tactful nor delicate, though it certainly is final.

‘He never takes the easy path of repeating a winning formula.’ Time Magazine

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Dec 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781447239819

Robert Barnard

Robert Barnard (1936-2013) was awarded the Malice Domestic Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Nero Wolfe Award, as well as the Agatha and Macavity awards. An eight-time Edgar nominee, he was a member of Britain's distinguished Detection Club, and, in May 2003, he received the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement in mystery writing. 

Reviews for At Death's Door

[lucybrown_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Pretty typical and predictable. This author's works seem very uneven. One of my favorite books this year was Barnard's Scandal in Belgravia. On the other hand this one was blah.

[raizel_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting story with some quite likable characters along with some monsters. I guessed whodunit rather quickly, but never why. And there could have been an equally valid different solution, but that would have meant that one of the quite likable characters had done it for noble, albeit misguided, reasons. I remember a woman in an Agatha Christie novel who had such rotten luck with her previous marriages that we, the readers, really wanted her current marriage to work out well. Alas, it fit the pattern of her other relationships and her husband was the murderer.