Murder in the Barn

The Arnold Landon Series, Book 1

De: Roy Lewis

Narrado por: Steven Crossley

Meet Arnold Landon, mild-mannered history buff turned amateur sleuth. Murder in the Barn marks the beginning of an addictive new series, featuring an unlikely hero whose passions run deep.

IT STARTS WITH A SIMPLE PLANNING REQUEST …

Rampton Farm, Northumberland, has always been a gloomy, godforsaken place. Now it’s earmarked for demolition—to make way for just another tawdry amusement park. It will be progress, and nothing can stand in the way—except perhaps Arnold Landon, the Planning Officer who must glean the lie of the land.

Medieval architecture is Arnold’s passion. And scouting the grounds, he makes a thrilling discovery: the Old Wheat Barn. He is captivated the moment he crosses the threshold; its walls echo with whispers of the past. Then and there, he realizes he must save it from the developers. But his efforts meet with hostile resistance. And then the barn offers up its most shocking secret yet …

A dead body, sprawled in the straw.

What other crimes lay hidden in the dark history of the barn? Arnold won’t rest until he uncovers the truth.

Originally published as A Gathering of Ghosts, fans of Elly Griffiths, Peter James, P. D. James, Damien Boyd, Helen H. Durrant, JD Kirk, Bill Kitson, and Peter Robinson will devour this intriguing mystery.

©1982, 2012, 2021 Roy Lewis (P)2022 Blackstone Publishing

Interesting…

Story was decent; if bit drawn out, too much here and there.
Seemed like author was searching for too much and lacked in finding the core of the main character until the end.?
Might have been better served with some introspection,and few re-writes. Promising overall.

Performance changes

The reader gave interesting nuances to the characters. Unfortunately, the primary character was very dull.

A Unique Protagonist

Readers who enjoy a leisurely, character-driven story will appreciate this mystery set in Northern England. The narrator does a wonderful job with the various accents. I found the whole historical background interesting, but I imagine that people with short attention spans might not be similarly captivated.

Great story and great reader

Wonderful little mystery, red perfectly by Steven Crossley. I will definitely download more of Roy Lewis‘s books!

Finding the magical in the mundane

The slow moving pace of this book seems well suited to both the bureaucracy and the country life in which the protagonist moved.

A minor bureaucrat in a planning office who is enchanted by the history and qualities of wood makes for a most unusual detective.

It is all the more remarkable that the author works into this already unusual mix, passages on aesthetics and ethics.

The longer I listened to this book, the more engaged I became. I’m looking forward to what comes next.

Good read!

murder, murder-investigation, local-politics, law-enforcement, amateur-sleuth, first-in-series, small-town, rural, farming****

Arnold Landon has a passion for wood. Not in the scholarly sense, but the real deal. He knows and has been to the library to study the particulars of a peculiar piece of roofing and has dated it to a precise time in that woodworker's life. 1349. But the greedy builder wants it torn down, the publicity hound professor thinks he's nutz, and the local council isn't sure if it is a Historic property or not.
This book meanders along like Slow-TV in Norway but it certainly keeps interest through all the twists and red herrings.
I see that this is a re-issue of the first book in series and it is set in the 1980s.
I bought the audio done by award winning narrator Steven Crossley!

2.5 stars. Ok, but not my cup of tea

2.5 stars. I liked that the protagonist was a history and architecture enthusiast. However the story just seemed to drag for me, and I found my attention wandering often. It seemed like things didn’t really start to pick up with the discovery of a murder until after halfway through the book. Overall it was ok, but just not my cup of tea.