The Habit of Widowhood: And other Murderous Proclivities

Prize-winning author Robert Barnard presents seventeen witty mystery stories featuring everyday characters who discover their potential for murder, including a young woman who weds a string of old men and develops a penchant for widowhood.

A young girl is brought up in seclusion by her elderly parents who are obsessed with isolating her from the sinfulness of life in the wicked world. When, to secure her future, they marry her off to an elderly widower, they set in motion events more terrible than the most hateful of parents could have foreseen.

A woman with an enticing sexual secret marries an elderly gentleman - and then another and another. It is all too easy, it seems, to get into the habit of widowhood.

A young soldier, home from World War I, is determined to live and love not just for himself, but for all his fallen comrades. But in doing so he enrages a number of husbands.

A man going through a midlife crisis meets the bully who made his life hell at school. Some things never change, he discovers, including the taste for inflicting pain.

Publishers Weekly

Crime master Barnard is at his roguish best in the short form as he effortlessly shifts these 17 tales through emotional and narrative gears. The act of murder is viewed through the eyes of a dog; an overabundance of "bliss" leaves a slew of older husbands dead and a merry young widow blessed with multiple inheritances; a randy old soldier who returns from the war to offer comfort to wives and widows gets his during a genteel game of bowls. A lifelong liberal, Barnard takes a special delight in skewering the privileged classes, often by letting driven working women cut a savage swath through legions of dull old boys. Occasionally, Barnard gets a shade gothic: a man imagines the son he never had and pays a steep price for his newfound happiness; a shy, secluded young woman is bartered into a disastrous marriage. Only once does the author stumble, as a violent sexual relationship between two men segues into theft. The wealth of ideas and inventions here might well be hoarded by other authors for a series of novels, but Barnard has such profligate wit and imagination that he can afford to deliver this abundance in a single volume. (Sept.)

A young girl is brought up in seclusion by her elderly parents who are obsessed with isolating her from the sinfulness of life in the wicked world. When, to secure her future, they marry her off to an elderly widower, they set in motion events more terrible than the most hateful of parents could have foreseen. A woman with an enticing sexual secret marries an elderly gentleman - and then another and another. It is all too easy, it seems, to get into the habit of widowhood. A young soldier, home from World War I, is determined to live and love not just for himself, but for all his fallen comrades. But in doing so he enrages a number of husbands. A man going through a midlife crisis meets the bully who made his life hell at school. Some things never change, he discovers, including the taste for inflicting pain. And Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, marooned in the drafty gloom of Queen Victoria's Balmoral Castle, decides that adultery and gambling can be almost as troubling as how to spell words of more than one syllable. Seventeen stories. The title piece is on a woman who marries older men in order to murder them, The Stuff of Nightmares is an old boys' reunion between a bully and the man he bullied, while Dog Television is on a murder from the point of view of a dog