THE BONES IN THE ATTIC

A genteel inquiry into the grave problem of what happens when one’s future is shanghaied by one’s past. Soccer star–turned–media personality Matt Harper has just bought Elderholm, a rambling house in Leeds, with plans to settle down with his love Aileen and her three children. Surveying the attic with an architect, they discover a tiny body that DI Charlie Peace identifies as a two-year-old who died 30 years ago. That time-frame fits the year Matt lived in Leeds with his auntie and played five-a-side soccer with his mates. Several of those mates have passed on; one has become a lush; still another is as smug and cantankerous as ever, at least according to Matt’s memory. When DI Peace admits that a death so long ago will scarcely be a top priority for the CID, Matt perseveres on his own, interviewing those five-a-side chums, figuring out just who lived in which house back then, and tracking down a hippie squatter couple and their lovechild—as well as the identity of one ballplayer’s emotionally warped secret mentor whose ideas were passed down to bad effect.

Developed with the skill typical of Barnard (The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori, 1999, etc.), all the more potent for dispensing with flash, gore, and melodrama.