The Case of the Missing Bronte

Rating:
Summary: Perry Trethowan is as interesting as the cases he cracks
Review: I met Robert Barnard in Yorkshire this summer in his role as the president of the Bronte Society. He told me of "The Case of the Missing Bronte" and described it as "an awful book," and said only the Brontesque lines with which he closes the work were really good. I picked it up and was surprised. While uneven in plot development, The Case of the Missing Bronte is rich in its characters -- only in the case of the Rev. Amos Macklehose does he lapse into caricature -- and Perry Trethowan's sometimes hilarious private observations -- "I ws even grumpier after we had stopped for twenty minutes for Jan to write postcards and Daniel to eat something fluorescent on a strick" -- keep the book moving. This is not Barnard's best book. It is also, its author's modesty notwithstanding, nothing approaching an "awful" book and no serious reader of Barnard would dare miss the book that reflects the origins of his interest in literature: the work of Emily Bronte.

Rating:
Summary: Funny
Review: Real funny, if your were to read any of his books the humour in them is bound to attract the reader's attention, the suspence is nothing to write home about and lacks the class and elan of Gardner.