On Our Bookshelves:
Out of the Blackout

NOVEL: Out of the Blackout

AUTHOR: Robert Barnard

YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 1984

REVIEW:

This mystery novel begins with a happy ending. During the Blitz, Londoners were sending their children out of the city to the relative safety of the countryside. In the village of Yeasdon, one little boy, aged five, showed up along with a bunch of others, calling himself Simon Thorn, although his name appeared nowhere on any government list, and he could not (or would not) provide any background information about himself, his parentage, or his origins. Polite and intelligent, he was given over to a kind childless couple, who took good care of him, loved him, and ended up raising him as their own, when no relatives or guardians ever showed up to claim him after the war.

***

The book heats up, when, as an adult, Simon returns to London and starts to remember some clues about his past; he does some digging and some investigative work. The more he (and the reader) learn, the more disturbing his story becomes…but I won’t tell you more.

***

Robert Barnard was a big Agatha Christie fan and modeled his mysteries after hers. They’re old fashioned, light on sex and violence, entertaining, and rather funny. This one gets a bit dark, as Simon dredges up some of what may have best been forgotten, but worry not. The book ends with a happy ending, too.

***

RATING (one to five whistles, with five being the best): 3 Whistles

***

HOW TO PURCHASE: Felony & Mayhem Press

***

ALSO ON OUR BOOKSHELVES:

 

A Patchwork Planet, Anne Tyler

A Room With a View, E.M. Forster

An Infamous Army, Georgette Heyer

Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Bleak House, Charles Dickens

Blue Highways, William Least Heat-Moon

Bonjour Tristesse, Francoise Sagan

Bunker Hill, Nathan Philbrick

Burmese Days, George Orwell

Cannery Row, John Steinbeck

Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White

Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

Cockpit Confidential, Patrick Smith

Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons

Envious Casca, Georgette Heyer

Foreign Affairs, Alison Lurie

Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayers

Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee

Heads in Beds, Jacob Tomsky

I Am Malala, Malala Yousafzai

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou

Longbourn, Jo Baker

Malice Aforethought, Frances Iles

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Helen Simonson

Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town, Jon Krakauer

Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut

My Life in France, Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme

Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

One Summer: America 1927, Bill Bryson

Plotted: A Literary Atlas, Andrew DeGraff

Possession, A.S. Byatt

Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle…and Other Modern Verse, Stephen Dunning, Edward Lueders, and Hugh Smith

Ringworld, Larry Niven

Rose Madder, Stephen King

Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart

The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Ed., Lewis Carroll & Martin Gardner (with original illustrations by John Tenniel)

The Cuckoo’s Calling, Robert Galbraith

The Dancer of Izu, Kawabata Yasunari

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot

The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., Adelle Waldman

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, Oliver Sacks

The Martian, Andy Weir

The Monogram Murders, Sophie Hannah

The Mother & Child Project, Hope Through Healing Hands (ed.)

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark

The Tender Bar, J.R. Moehringer

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce

The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories, Saki

The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin

What If?, Randall Munroe

Up At the Villa, W. Somerset Maugham

***

Lead-In Image Courtesy of Everett Historical

***

Laura LaVelle is an attorney and writer who lives in Connecticut, in a not quite 100-year-old house, along with her husband, two daughters, and a cockatiel.

Laura can be contacted at laura@newswhistle.com