Suspicion

by Robert McCrum

British barrister and district coroner Julian Whyte finds his peaceful, uneventful life jeopardized by the return of his older brother, Raymond, an expatriate communist intellectual, and his new German wife, Kristina, in a suspenseful tale of brotherhood, guilt, betrayal, and death. Tour.

Genres: Fiction

292 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Robert McCrum is an associate editor of the Observer. He was born and educated in Cambridge. For nearly 20 years he was editor-in-chief of the publishers Faber & Faber. He is the co-author of The Story of English (1986), and has written six novels. He was the literary editor of the Observer from 1996 to 2008, and has been a regular contributor to the Guardian since 1990

Reviews

[Jayne Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those books that you find mouldering on the shelves of second hand bookstores at the quiet end of town, or turning slowly yellow in the private library of a big old house. Seemingly published in a parallel universe because they're unlikely to turn up in WHSmith, not being quite commercial enough. I quite like books like this, though, they deal with unusual subjects and are not afraid to feature ordinary people with rather boring habits. The narrator of this one describes himself as 'Death's Secretary' (he's a coroner - liked that one) and has all the charisma of a used teabag but there's a space for people like that in the world. If I had a problem with this book it was that it's too measured. The real action (and it's quite impressive action) is confined to the last few pages. The rest of it is competently written but a little samey. In a nutshell, it's a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of sh*gging one's Communist sister-in-law. Perhaps I'm revealing myself as a mouldering-on-the-bookshelf type, but after a short time I found myself wanting to hear less about sh*gging and more about Communism.

[Persephone · Rating 1 out of 5]

I forced myself to read two thirds of the way through this before giving up. The artificiality of the plot and characters drove me nuts. I suppose there are people who converse this way, have these motivations and are prone to taking slips of paper with quotes scribbled on them to make a point to one's brother at the site of one's mother's grave, but these are not people about which I wish to read. Maybe I should have gone with McCrum's biography of Wodehouse....

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This starts off well, sort of a combination of a suspense thriller and a Barbara Pym novel, about an emotionally shut-down man in a country village, who works as a coroner and is preparing for the not-very-welcome return of his Communist older brother from his long exile in the East. But instead of building a sense of dread and the inevitability of things going wrong, the book veers into contrivance and finally becomes somewhat silly. Half a good book is better than none, I suppose.

[Stephen Hayes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Julian Whyte, a middle-aged bachelor lawyer, who serves as a part-time coroner in Brighton in the south of England, finds his life disrupted when his communist elder brother Raymond, who had lived as an expatriate in East Germany, returns to England with his much younger wife and two young children after the reunification of Germany.

Raymond was so much older that Julian had hardly known him as a child, but he also finds Raymond's wife Kristina disturbingly attractive.

There's not much more one can say about it without introducing spoilers. It's a crime novel, but not a whodunit. The characters are interesting, and it also shows how characters shape and are shaped by the circumstances of their lives.