A Ghost in the Machine - Softcover

Graham, Caroline

3.88

2,055 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0755307720 ISBN 13: 9780755307722

Publisher: Gardners Books, 2005

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

All men should have a hobby: it keeps them out from under their wives' feet. Dennis Brinkley's hobby, though, was killing machines. No wonder the village was uneasy...Mallory Lawson believes that inheriting his aunt's beautiful house in Forbes Abbot may have saved his sanity. It enables him to take early retirement from his appalling teaching job in London, and his wife Kate to realise her dream of starting her own company. Life will be so much simpler in the country, won't it? But Forbes Abbot is not quite the close-knit community it seems, and little differences and squabbles can become violent - even murderous. Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby has encountered many intriguing cases, but the case of the ghost in the machine is one to test even the most experienced of detectives.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

From the Back Cover:

SOME SECRETS ARE DEADLY IN THIS WORLD-
AND THE NEXT...

Scrupulously honest and warm-hearted, solicitor Dennis Brinkley was about the most-liked person in the peaceful country village of Forbes Abbot. His only eccentricity: restoring fearsome ancient war machines. So when he's killed by a cannonball from one of his contraptions, even Chief Inspector Barnaby believes it's a freak accident. Until an opportunistic medium claims Dennis is about to reveal his murderer to her ...and soon turns up deceased herself.

Now, with two people dead and a possible witness missing, Barnaby must untangle the sinister doings and passionate obsessions underneath Forbes Abbot's vale of seeming tranquility. And the eminently rational chief inspector must uncover evidence of things not seen before time runs out-and a calculating killer forever gets beyond his reach.

"Graham's ingeniously constructed novels featuring Chief Inspector Barnaby are actually clever satires, closer to Robert Barnard than Agatha Christie in their cruel theatricality."
-Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

"The investigation is top rate, but it is the eccentricity of the villagers that make for a fantastic cozy-like tale."
-Midwest Book Review

From the Inside Flap:

"Simply the best detective writer since Agatha Christie."
- The Sunday Times of London

"Graham writes in an old-fashioned way with leisurely grace, ironic wit, and a corker of a plot. The result: top-flight entertainment."
- Kirkus Reviews (starred reviews)

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.