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Chief Inspector Barnaby #2
Death Of A Hollow Man
Actors do love their dramas, and the members of the Causton Amateur Dramatic Society are no exception. Passionate love scenes, jealous rages'they're better than a paycheck (not that anyone one in this production of Amadeus is getting one). But even the most theatrically minded must admit that murdering the leading man in full view of the audience is a bit over the top. Luckily, Inspector Tom Barnaby is in that audience, and he's just the man to find the killer. With so many dramas playing out, there's no shortage of suspects, including secret lovers and jealous understudies galore.
296 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
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1981 people want to read
About the author
Caroline Graham
25 books598 followersCaroline Graham is an English playwright, screenwriter and novelist. She attended the Open University, and received a degree in writing for the theatre from the University of Birmingham.
Series:
* Chief Inspector Barnaby
Series:
* Chief Inspector Barnaby
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 361 reviews
May 6, 2019
Although I am not much of a television watcher, and have never seen Midsomer Murders, I am really enjoying reading this series, best known for the TV adaptation. This is the second in the Detectie Chief Inspector Barnaby series and, in the best tradition of so many mysteries, it is set within the theatre. In this case, it is the Causton Amateur Dramatic Society, of which Barnaby’s wife, Joyce, is a member.
Esslyn Carmichael is the leading man, whose current wife, and ex-wife, are also involved in the cast of, “Amadeus,” along with a number of other characters. There are rumours that Esslyn’s young wife, Kitty, is having an affair and tensions rise, resulting in a murder during opening night of the play. Both Barnaby, and his sidekick, Troy, were both in the audience and so find themselves investigating people that Barnaby has known well – some for several years.
I greatly enjoyed this mystery and preferred it more than the first in the series. In a way, Caroline Graham’s writing reminds me of P.D. James, and Jane Haddam, in the way she gives her characters a lot of depth and background. This is very much character driven, although Graham also has tight plotting. Certainly a series that I wish to continue and I look forward to reading more about C.I. Barnaby and his family.
Esslyn Carmichael is the leading man, whose current wife, and ex-wife, are also involved in the cast of, “Amadeus,” along with a number of other characters. There are rumours that Esslyn’s young wife, Kitty, is having an affair and tensions rise, resulting in a murder during opening night of the play. Both Barnaby, and his sidekick, Troy, were both in the audience and so find themselves investigating people that Barnaby has known well – some for several years.
I greatly enjoyed this mystery and preferred it more than the first in the series. In a way, Caroline Graham’s writing reminds me of P.D. James, and Jane Haddam, in the way she gives her characters a lot of depth and background. This is very much character driven, although Graham also has tight plotting. Certainly a series that I wish to continue and I look forward to reading more about C.I. Barnaby and his family.
February 13, 2025
Lunchtime Listen February 2025
Well how good was that ? Similar to my two previous reviews of Barnaby novels we have listened to, this was again brilliant. Now don’t get me wrong, I really love watching John Nettles as Tom Barnaby and even Neil Dudgeon as his cousin John, although one really does miss Joyce and her cooking !! Oops got slightly sidetracked, yes I really like the tv series’ but the books just have even more of the bits that make the tv series so great; the comedy, the wit and even more of the characters.
And that is why these audiobooks are so brilliant , the story another level up from what is still an enjoyable visual experience on tv, and of course the reading by John Hopkins, who is just superb. Such brilliant voices especially Barnaby himself.
Anyway this novel is all about a theatre company and a dreadful murder on opening night, remember it ?
It’s just fabulous and so we got through 13 hours in just 3 lunchtimes. The joy of being retired ha ha.
Well how good was that ? Similar to my two previous reviews of Barnaby novels we have listened to, this was again brilliant. Now don’t get me wrong, I really love watching John Nettles as Tom Barnaby and even Neil Dudgeon as his cousin John, although one really does miss Joyce and her cooking !! Oops got slightly sidetracked, yes I really like the tv series’ but the books just have even more of the bits that make the tv series so great; the comedy, the wit and even more of the characters.
And that is why these audiobooks are so brilliant , the story another level up from what is still an enjoyable visual experience on tv, and of course the reading by John Hopkins, who is just superb. Such brilliant voices especially Barnaby himself.
Anyway this novel is all about a theatre company and a dreadful murder on opening night, remember it ?
It’s just fabulous and so we got through 13 hours in just 3 lunchtimes. The joy of being retired ha ha.
July 22, 2019
Just can't ... this is absolute tripe. The author merely waffles on and on about her boring characters for pages and pages. They were still there doing and saying boring and irrelevant things when I left them somewhere around page 70. I don't even know who got murdered, let alone who murdered them, because it hadn't reached that stage yet. But I can make an educated guess. It's the author trying to murder the reader by boring them to death. Ha, I didn't fall for that - narrow escape!
March 11, 2025
If you enjoy watching cosy murder mysteries, it’s likely that over the years you have caught an episode or two of “Midsomer Murders” on TV. You might even be a regular viewer, since there have been a staggering 140 episodes over 21 series - and that’s only so far! Even though it is set in the present day, the series has a rose-tinted view of village life. It is subtly nostalgic, lulling us into a time and place which has never actually existed in quite this way.
Much like Miss Marple’s St. Mary Mead, the traditional English villages within Midsomer are idyllic - except for the murders - which are unfailingly solved by one or other Inspector Barnaby. There have been two “Inspector Barnaby”s in fact. First came Tom, who held the position for many years before his cousin John took over as the current Inspector Barnaby. Various writers keep the formula going, including Helen Jenkins, Jeff Povey, Nicholas Hicks-Beach, Julia Gilbert and Maria Ward.
However, although the series took off in a big way, there were only ever 7 original novels, conceived and written by the English author Caroline Graham, and they are considerably more realistic. Her first novel was a romantic novel, and had been published 5 years before her first Inspector Barnaby novel. “The Killings at Badger’s Drift” was published in 1987, and was well received by the mystery community. In fact it was selected by the Crime Writers’ Association as one of “The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time”. The first five Inspector Barnaby novels formed the basis of the first five episodes of the TV “Midsomer Murders”. Caroline Graham herself actually had a small part in the third dramatisation.
Death of a Hollow Man is perhaps my favourite novel of the series. Published in 1989, it is the second of the Midsomer Murder Mysteries. The action centres on an amateur theatre’s ambitious production of Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus”, and the novel is cleverly structured to mimic a play.
Instead of chapters, it has a list of “Contents”, the first of which is in the style of a theatre programme. Thus the reader equates to the audience in a live production. We read with anticipation a list of characters from “Amadeus”, alongside the character in the novel who will be playing them. There are no numbered Scenes, because in Peter Schaffer’s play the action is fluid and continuous, within two Acts. This is one of the reasons why it was such a challenge to stage, but then the director of Causton drama group, Harold Winstanley is nothing if not ambitious, with a very high opinion of himself.
I found this list invaluable in sorting out the characters and their roles, when reading the novel. Who would play Mozart and who Salieri? Who the flirtatious Constanza Weber; who the pompous Joseph II, Emperor of Austria? Who the over-the-top wife, Teresa Salieri? Who the obsequious Venticelli duo - or Salieri's personal valet? All seem delightfully typecast. However, avid readers of whodunnits who consider plot to far outweigh characterisation, might never refer to it again, nor do they need to.
“Curtain Raiser” follows, which is a sort of introduction to the action. Then comes “Dramatis Personae”, which is a short and enjoyable section, concentrating in turn on each player/character. Again this reads well, as part of the action, but really helped me to remember who everyone was, which tends to be a problem for me in cosy mysteries with an abundance of one-dimensional characters.
Although there are no set scenes to formally base the action on, the other sections are titled, and reflect the progress of the story. They include “Entracte”, First Night,“ ”Exit, Pursued by a Bear” and so on, using theatrical terms and quotations. It is a neat and satisfying way of proceeding through the story. The clever literary and theatrical references lift this above a mid-range cosy crime novel, as does the depth of characterisation. Also, I do not think many detective novels include paragraphs such as:
“Above his head, above the lightning grid and the theatre roof and the night sky and the limitless deep black arc of the heavens, Thalia, the comic muse, was playing Chinese checkers with the Eumenides. Catching these words on a misdirected breeze, she was overcome by hysterical laughter and had to be helped from her cloud to the nearest comfort station.”
This happens after an hilarious comic scene describing the fiasco of the dress rehearsal, when one of the minor players repeats a fatuous platitude that “Everyone knows a bad dress rehearsal means a good first night.” As indicated by the context, in Classical Mythology Thalia was one of the Three Graces, and the muse of comedy. Eumenides is is a euphemistic name for the Furies, meaning “the Kindly Ones”. An ironic reference to an ultra modern slang term “comfort lounge” and a fanciful bit about clouds, brings us back to the present.
So we have a juxtaposition between a jocular episode and classical references, along with the structure of the novel echoing that of a play. We have the replication of actor’s “jargon” and in some cases, their pretentiousness, which feels all too real. In real life Simon Callow played Mozart in the first performance of Amadeus at the National Theatre, on 2nd November 1979. It seems particularly ironic that they refer to his “mannered” performance. It is all very well observed, and makes me wonder if the author herself spent some time in “Am Dram”. Caroline Graham is now 93, incidentally.
It is always difficult to know how much to write about the actual plot of a mystery. The whys and the wherefores are surely out of bounds. Would you like to know in advance what leads to the murder? Or when it occurs? Or whether there will be more murders? … Even these are suppositions, and perhaps Caroline Graham will subvert the genre. Can we be sure that there will be a murder at all? .
Plenty of reviews will tell you these details however, and the blurb will tell you the outline of the plot, should you wish to know it. Also, if you are conversant with “Amadeus” you can have a guess at who the victim might be, and most book covers will indicate the probable means of death. I’m not going to add any more spoilers! Instead I’ll look at some of the differences between the original novels and the series with Tom Barnaby in.
For a start, the TV characters are all far more likeable. The ongoing characters are Inspector Tom Barnaby and his sergeant Gavin Troy. In the background are Tom’s wife Joyce, and his daughter Cully. The rest of the characters are mostly members of the cast who belong to the Causton Players, and are all known to him as fellow villagers and for the most part, friends. This adds an extra frisson when he has to interview them, although perfectionists may doubt whether police procedure would have allowed an inspector so personally involved to oversee any suspicious death.
In the TV series, Joyce is a happily amenable middle-class wife, whose accepted function is to support her husband. A running joke, to add verisimilitude and humour in both the books and the TV series, is that her cooking is appalling! Joyce does not work, but has a lot of leisure pursuits and is a willing volunteer for worthy causes. Conveniently, these often enable her to have information which will lead to Tom solving the case. It might be something in a book she is reading for her book club, or something she sees at her Art class when the group is painting a local landscape, or something she discovers in a church when doing brass rubbings, or as part of an ecological action group who are clearing a river bank and disused railway tunnel. It is a kind of trope within the series.
I have indicated Joyce’s part in Death of a Hollow Man under an earlier spoiler, and apart from a little nurturing hospitality for one of the nicer members of the company, that is her sole function in this book. The TV programmes develop and domesticise the character of Joyce a great deal. In this novel we learn that Joyce Barnaby was formerly a classical singer, who had trained at the prestigious Guildhall School of Music and worked professionally for a while. Her husband Tom has a brief pang of guilt now and then, that she gave this up to look after him and his daughter, but his regret is tempered by the knowledge that it was her choice.
Their daughter Cully is in her final year at Oxford university. She is beautiful and intelligent, and considerable less likeable than the TV Cully. We are told that she can be malicious, and view this for ourselves. There is one episode where Cully shows a more empathic side, but usually we are aware that Tom keeps a tight rein on his daughter’s tendency to be scathing and disregard others’ feelings when pronouncing on anything she considers beneath her standards.
We learn more about Tom Barnaby as a person that we do in the TV series. We learn that he loves his garden, and is a talented artist too, recruited by the Causton Players for his skill at special effects with scenery and set painting. We see that he does not suffer fools gladly; for instance with one 19 year old trophy wife:
“Kitty, whose winsome appearance masked, he felt sure, a self-serving duplicitous little nature, [Tom] raised his shaggy eyebrows. His eyes shone with a gleam at once caustic and humorous.”
Tom also has the instincts of a born copper:
“The smell in the theatre was a smell he recognised. And so he should. It had been under his nose for a large part of his working life. A hot, burnt smell, ferocious and stifling. The whole place stank of it. The smell of violence.”
and is much admired by his sergeant:
“Actors, thought the sergeant, wearing a shade of a contemptuous smile. You’d have to get up early to find one to match the DCI. He had as many expression to his face and shades to his voice as a mangy dog had fleas. He could imitate the dove and the scorpion and even the donkey if he thought it would serve his ends. More than once Troy had seen him shaking his head in bewilderment whilst witnesses feeling secure in his incomprehension happily babbled on, quite missing the echo of the turnkey’s tread. And he had a special smile seen only at the moment of closing in.”
Sergeant Gavin Troy is:
“a young man with bristly red hair and a sharp narrow face [who] wore a sports jacket.”
He is a far cry from the amiable, slightly dimwitted Troy of the TV series. It would be difficult to portray a more unpleasant character in the job. Prejudiced against every minority, believing that women should know their place (which is generally to worship the great Sergeant Troy), we are told that he is a “philanderer”, always on the lookout, with a mousey wife who we can see resents her lot. At the end of the book Troy is clearly off to meet one of his conquests, to which his inspector disapproves. Indeed Tom has given Troy a few frozen looks of dislike through the story, all of which are well deserved. Here are a few of Troy’s choicest epithets:
“He always boasted he could tell an arse-bandit a mile off”
“he thought the actors a load of poncy show-offs”
or this one, in which Troy assumes all the right-thinking world agrees with his views on gay couples, and has no doubt that his superior will:
“‘How would it be if I had a word with him?’ Troy arched his wrist limply. ‘Little Miss Roly Poly. On her tod like.’ He winked. ‘She’d soon crumble.’ He received in exchange for the wink a stare so icy that he all but crumbled himself.”
Tom is the opposite, never judging people’s life-styles or choices, although he does call two other males in a close relationship of a different type:
“You malicious, wicked, meddling, evil-minded bastards.”
We see several instances of unexpected profanity from Tom, when he is frustrated at the seemingly inexplicable solution. Fair-minded as he is, this is a very different Inspector Barnaby from the dear old Tom of the cosy TV series. He does though, try to inculcate good procedure in young Troy:
“Just because someone displays an emotion in the most effective or even stylish manner of which they’re capable doesn’t mean it isn’t genuine, Remember that.”
“Right chief.”
Troy though is not the only one who considered the Causton players at the Latimer Theatre as:
“posers and has-beens and never-would-be’s and dead weights.”
These are the words of Nicholas, newly recruited for the role of Mozart and full of enthusiasm, working fiendishly hard at all aspects of the production. He is one of the few with genuine talent. Yet it does not prevent him from viewing the leading man Esslyn Carmichael as:
“Salieri Patron Saint of Mediocrities”
And at about a quarter of the way through we have our echo of the title, in Nicholas’s inner thoughts:
“It was all very well for Avery to describe the performance as ‘just like an Easter egg darling. All ribbons and bows and little candied bits and pieces with a bloody great hollow at the centre.’”
Could this be a crafty bit of foreshadowing? If so, we do not yet see how, or who the “hollow man” might be. Near the end, we have a Poirot-like lecture, with all the contenders gathered together, as Inspector Barnaby carefully reveals the culprit. But is this the hollow man? Or the victim? Or the perpetrator of a crime:
“we all knew what sort of person was. Eminently fanciable, vain, strong-willed, solipsistic, a wow with the ladies. But when I tried to get to grips with this character I found he simply wasn’t there. There were outward signs of course. Certain narcissistic posturings … and Casanovian pursuits … but beyond that … nothing.”
Here is the stage manager’s personal view of him:
“His condescension and spite; his indifference to their feelings, his impregnable self-esteem and swaggering coxcombry. His laughter and sneers against her father.”
None of the actors are appealing, but their vanities are very human, and we become absorbed in their stories. The stage manager, Dierdre, is presented as the only straightforward and honest one among the crowd. All life is here. We see types we recognise and know, but unlike some whodunnits these characters are fully developed. I would say that as a police procedural it is not as complex a plot as some. That is not to say we can necessarily guess whodunnit or why. I will reveal that under this spoiler, so beware!
.
This is neat, dramatic, and there are plenty of mistaken identities and deliberate scandalmongering, sometimes real and sometimes deliberately misleading, but always with mischievous intent.
Sometimes though, with Caroline Graham’s plots, I am left wondering about the psychology.
Nevertheless this is a real page-tuner; a delightfully absorbing and clever read.
Much like Miss Marple’s St. Mary Mead, the traditional English villages within Midsomer are idyllic - except for the murders - which are unfailingly solved by one or other Inspector Barnaby. There have been two “Inspector Barnaby”s in fact. First came Tom, who held the position for many years before his cousin John took over as the current Inspector Barnaby. Various writers keep the formula going, including Helen Jenkins, Jeff Povey, Nicholas Hicks-Beach, Julia Gilbert and Maria Ward.
However, although the series took off in a big way, there were only ever 7 original novels, conceived and written by the English author Caroline Graham, and they are considerably more realistic. Her first novel was a romantic novel, and had been published 5 years before her first Inspector Barnaby novel. “The Killings at Badger’s Drift” was published in 1987, and was well received by the mystery community. In fact it was selected by the Crime Writers’ Association as one of “The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time”. The first five Inspector Barnaby novels formed the basis of the first five episodes of the TV “Midsomer Murders”. Caroline Graham herself actually had a small part in the third dramatisation.
Death of a Hollow Man is perhaps my favourite novel of the series. Published in 1989, it is the second of the Midsomer Murder Mysteries. The action centres on an amateur theatre’s ambitious production of Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus”, and the novel is cleverly structured to mimic a play.
Instead of chapters, it has a list of “Contents”, the first of which is in the style of a theatre programme. Thus the reader equates to the audience in a live production. We read with anticipation a list of characters from “Amadeus”, alongside the character in the novel who will be playing them. There are no numbered Scenes, because in Peter Schaffer’s play the action is fluid and continuous, within two Acts. This is one of the reasons why it was such a challenge to stage, but then the director of Causton drama group, Harold Winstanley is nothing if not ambitious, with a very high opinion of himself.
I found this list invaluable in sorting out the characters and their roles, when reading the novel. Who would play Mozart and who Salieri? Who the flirtatious Constanza Weber; who the pompous Joseph II, Emperor of Austria? Who the over-the-top wife, Teresa Salieri? Who the obsequious Venticelli duo - or Salieri's personal valet? All seem delightfully typecast. However, avid readers of whodunnits who consider plot to far outweigh characterisation, might never refer to it again, nor do they need to.
“Curtain Raiser” follows, which is a sort of introduction to the action. Then comes “Dramatis Personae”, which is a short and enjoyable section, concentrating in turn on each player/character. Again this reads well, as part of the action, but really helped me to remember who everyone was, which tends to be a problem for me in cosy mysteries with an abundance of one-dimensional characters.
Although there are no set scenes to formally base the action on, the other sections are titled, and reflect the progress of the story. They include “Entracte”, First Night,“ ”Exit, Pursued by a Bear” and so on, using theatrical terms and quotations. It is a neat and satisfying way of proceeding through the story. The clever literary and theatrical references lift this above a mid-range cosy crime novel, as does the depth of characterisation. Also, I do not think many detective novels include paragraphs such as:
“Above his head, above the lightning grid and the theatre roof and the night sky and the limitless deep black arc of the heavens, Thalia, the comic muse, was playing Chinese checkers with the Eumenides. Catching these words on a misdirected breeze, she was overcome by hysterical laughter and had to be helped from her cloud to the nearest comfort station.”
This happens after an hilarious comic scene describing the fiasco of the dress rehearsal, when one of the minor players repeats a fatuous platitude that “Everyone knows a bad dress rehearsal means a good first night.” As indicated by the context, in Classical Mythology Thalia was one of the Three Graces, and the muse of comedy. Eumenides is is a euphemistic name for the Furies, meaning “the Kindly Ones”. An ironic reference to an ultra modern slang term “comfort lounge” and a fanciful bit about clouds, brings us back to the present.
So we have a juxtaposition between a jocular episode and classical references, along with the structure of the novel echoing that of a play. We have the replication of actor’s “jargon” and in some cases, their pretentiousness, which feels all too real. In real life Simon Callow played Mozart in the first performance of Amadeus at the National Theatre, on 2nd November 1979. It seems particularly ironic that they refer to his “mannered” performance. It is all very well observed, and makes me wonder if the author herself spent some time in “Am Dram”. Caroline Graham is now 93, incidentally.
It is always difficult to know how much to write about the actual plot of a mystery. The whys and the wherefores are surely out of bounds. Would you like to know in advance what leads to the murder? Or when it occurs? Or whether there will be more murders? … Even these are suppositions, and perhaps Caroline Graham will subvert the genre. Can we be sure that there will be a murder at all? .
Plenty of reviews will tell you these details however, and the blurb will tell you the outline of the plot, should you wish to know it. Also, if you are conversant with “Amadeus” you can have a guess at who the victim might be, and most book covers will indicate the probable means of death. I’m not going to add any more spoilers! Instead I’ll look at some of the differences between the original novels and the series with Tom Barnaby in.
For a start, the TV characters are all far more likeable. The ongoing characters are Inspector Tom Barnaby and his sergeant Gavin Troy. In the background are Tom’s wife Joyce, and his daughter Cully. The rest of the characters are mostly members of the cast who belong to the Causton Players, and are all known to him as fellow villagers and for the most part, friends. This adds an extra frisson when he has to interview them, although perfectionists may doubt whether police procedure would have allowed an inspector so personally involved to oversee any suspicious death.
In the TV series, Joyce is a happily amenable middle-class wife, whose accepted function is to support her husband. A running joke, to add verisimilitude and humour in both the books and the TV series, is that her cooking is appalling! Joyce does not work, but has a lot of leisure pursuits and is a willing volunteer for worthy causes. Conveniently, these often enable her to have information which will lead to Tom solving the case. It might be something in a book she is reading for her book club, or something she sees at her Art class when the group is painting a local landscape, or something she discovers in a church when doing brass rubbings, or as part of an ecological action group who are clearing a river bank and disused railway tunnel. It is a kind of trope within the series.
I have indicated Joyce’s part in Death of a Hollow Man under an earlier spoiler, and apart from a little nurturing hospitality for one of the nicer members of the company, that is her sole function in this book. The TV programmes develop and domesticise the character of Joyce a great deal. In this novel we learn that Joyce Barnaby was formerly a classical singer, who had trained at the prestigious Guildhall School of Music and worked professionally for a while. Her husband Tom has a brief pang of guilt now and then, that she gave this up to look after him and his daughter, but his regret is tempered by the knowledge that it was her choice.
Their daughter Cully is in her final year at Oxford university. She is beautiful and intelligent, and considerable less likeable than the TV Cully. We are told that she can be malicious, and view this for ourselves. There is one episode where Cully shows a more empathic side, but usually we are aware that Tom keeps a tight rein on his daughter’s tendency to be scathing and disregard others’ feelings when pronouncing on anything she considers beneath her standards.
We learn more about Tom Barnaby as a person that we do in the TV series. We learn that he loves his garden, and is a talented artist too, recruited by the Causton Players for his skill at special effects with scenery and set painting. We see that he does not suffer fools gladly; for instance with one 19 year old trophy wife:
“Kitty, whose winsome appearance masked, he felt sure, a self-serving duplicitous little nature, [Tom] raised his shaggy eyebrows. His eyes shone with a gleam at once caustic and humorous.”
Tom also has the instincts of a born copper:
“The smell in the theatre was a smell he recognised. And so he should. It had been under his nose for a large part of his working life. A hot, burnt smell, ferocious and stifling. The whole place stank of it. The smell of violence.”
and is much admired by his sergeant:
“Actors, thought the sergeant, wearing a shade of a contemptuous smile. You’d have to get up early to find one to match the DCI. He had as many expression to his face and shades to his voice as a mangy dog had fleas. He could imitate the dove and the scorpion and even the donkey if he thought it would serve his ends. More than once Troy had seen him shaking his head in bewilderment whilst witnesses feeling secure in his incomprehension happily babbled on, quite missing the echo of the turnkey’s tread. And he had a special smile seen only at the moment of closing in.”
Sergeant Gavin Troy is:
“a young man with bristly red hair and a sharp narrow face [who] wore a sports jacket.”
He is a far cry from the amiable, slightly dimwitted Troy of the TV series. It would be difficult to portray a more unpleasant character in the job. Prejudiced against every minority, believing that women should know their place (which is generally to worship the great Sergeant Troy), we are told that he is a “philanderer”, always on the lookout, with a mousey wife who we can see resents her lot. At the end of the book Troy is clearly off to meet one of his conquests, to which his inspector disapproves. Indeed Tom has given Troy a few frozen looks of dislike through the story, all of which are well deserved. Here are a few of Troy’s choicest epithets:
“He always boasted he could tell an arse-bandit a mile off”
“he thought the actors a load of poncy show-offs”
or this one, in which Troy assumes all the right-thinking world agrees with his views on gay couples, and has no doubt that his superior will:
“‘How would it be if I had a word with him?’ Troy arched his wrist limply. ‘Little Miss Roly Poly. On her tod like.’ He winked. ‘She’d soon crumble.’ He received in exchange for the wink a stare so icy that he all but crumbled himself.”
Tom is the opposite, never judging people’s life-styles or choices, although he does call two other males in a close relationship of a different type:
“You malicious, wicked, meddling, evil-minded bastards.”
We see several instances of unexpected profanity from Tom, when he is frustrated at the seemingly inexplicable solution. Fair-minded as he is, this is a very different Inspector Barnaby from the dear old Tom of the cosy TV series. He does though, try to inculcate good procedure in young Troy:
“Just because someone displays an emotion in the most effective or even stylish manner of which they’re capable doesn’t mean it isn’t genuine, Remember that.”
“Right chief.”
Troy though is not the only one who considered the Causton players at the Latimer Theatre as:
“posers and has-beens and never-would-be’s and dead weights.”
These are the words of Nicholas, newly recruited for the role of Mozart and full of enthusiasm, working fiendishly hard at all aspects of the production. He is one of the few with genuine talent. Yet it does not prevent him from viewing the leading man Esslyn Carmichael as:
“Salieri Patron Saint of Mediocrities”
And at about a quarter of the way through we have our echo of the title, in Nicholas’s inner thoughts:
“It was all very well for Avery to describe the performance as ‘just like an Easter egg darling. All ribbons and bows and little candied bits and pieces with a bloody great hollow at the centre.’”
Could this be a crafty bit of foreshadowing? If so, we do not yet see how, or who the “hollow man” might be. Near the end, we have a Poirot-like lecture, with all the contenders gathered together, as Inspector Barnaby carefully reveals the culprit. But is this the hollow man? Or the victim? Or the perpetrator of a crime:
“we all knew what sort of person was. Eminently fanciable, vain, strong-willed, solipsistic, a wow with the ladies. But when I tried to get to grips with this character I found he simply wasn’t there. There were outward signs of course. Certain narcissistic posturings … and Casanovian pursuits … but beyond that … nothing.”
Here is the stage manager’s personal view of him:
“His condescension and spite; his indifference to their feelings, his impregnable self-esteem and swaggering coxcombry. His laughter and sneers against her father.”
None of the actors are appealing, but their vanities are very human, and we become absorbed in their stories. The stage manager, Dierdre, is presented as the only straightforward and honest one among the crowd. All life is here. We see types we recognise and know, but unlike some whodunnits these characters are fully developed. I would say that as a police procedural it is not as complex a plot as some. That is not to say we can necessarily guess whodunnit or why. I will reveal that under this spoiler, so beware!
.
This is neat, dramatic, and there are plenty of mistaken identities and deliberate scandalmongering, sometimes real and sometimes deliberately misleading, but always with mischievous intent.
Sometimes though, with Caroline Graham’s plots, I am left wondering about the psychology.
Nevertheless this is a real page-tuner; a delightfully absorbing and clever read.
February 28, 2018
Not the best Midsomer book I have read. I preferred the Killings at Badger’s Drift. The tv version of this one was much better. There wasn’t just the one murder with the attempt on Essley’s wife. The romance between Deirdre and David was better played out. Midsomer Murders often plays better on tv.
December 22, 2016
I have enjoyed all of the books in this series very much – and far more than I expected to. I grew tired of the Midsomer Murders TV series a long time ago, but the books are actually very different in tone and character from what the series became. They are very good novels of character with crime as their plot drivers.
In Death of a Hollow Man, Barnaby is dragged along to an amateur dramatic performance and ends up investigating a dramatic death. However, at least the first third of the book is scene-setting and the establishing of characters, and it is this which makes the books such a pleasure for me. She writes very well with a fine understanding of her characters and their motivations and there is genuine psychological insight here. She paints them with insight and a penetrating wit, making this far more than the collection of rather hollow stereotypes which sometimes go to make up the characters in the TV programmes. It is this which makes the books so worthwhile; she paints some scathing (and sometimes very funny) portraits but others with genuine compassion and depictions of goodness, all of which I found very realistic.
As always with Caroline Graham, the plotting is very good and she weaves a beguiling spell which hooked me in. It's quite a long way from the slightly twee whodunit feel of the TV series – especially in the character of Sergeant Troy who is no loveable sidekick but a lecherous, ignorant bigot with a strong line in unfunny, unpleasant jokes.
The prose is a pleasure to read, with plenty of pithy phrases; it carries you along very nicely without ever getting in the way of the story. I can recommend this very warmly as a very good, involving novel of character as well as being a very enjoyable crime mystery.
In Death of a Hollow Man, Barnaby is dragged along to an amateur dramatic performance and ends up investigating a dramatic death. However, at least the first third of the book is scene-setting and the establishing of characters, and it is this which makes the books such a pleasure for me. She writes very well with a fine understanding of her characters and their motivations and there is genuine psychological insight here. She paints them with insight and a penetrating wit, making this far more than the collection of rather hollow stereotypes which sometimes go to make up the characters in the TV programmes. It is this which makes the books so worthwhile; she paints some scathing (and sometimes very funny) portraits but others with genuine compassion and depictions of goodness, all of which I found very realistic.
As always with Caroline Graham, the plotting is very good and she weaves a beguiling spell which hooked me in. It's quite a long way from the slightly twee whodunit feel of the TV series – especially in the character of Sergeant Troy who is no loveable sidekick but a lecherous, ignorant bigot with a strong line in unfunny, unpleasant jokes.
The prose is a pleasure to read, with plenty of pithy phrases; it carries you along very nicely without ever getting in the way of the story. I can recommend this very warmly as a very good, involving novel of character as well as being a very enjoyable crime mystery.
May 18, 2019
I really enjoyed this reread with the Reading the Detectives group - I enjoy Midsomer Murders on PBS, based on Caroline Graham’s books, but had forgotten how cleverly snarky she was as a writer!
A village theatre group is rehearsing “Amadeus”and tensions are high - mistakes are made, egos clash, gossip snakes through the group - Graham really nails the theatrical setting! She brilliantly skewers the egos of amateur actors and directors, giving the reader great characters and a building tension that will obviously end in a murder - it’s just a question of which awful, shallow character will be the victim...
No spoilers, but a very enjoyable murder mystery with snarky, clever dialogue, great characters and a very likable detective in Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby. I look forward to rereading more in this series.
A village theatre group is rehearsing “Amadeus”and tensions are high - mistakes are made, egos clash, gossip snakes through the group - Graham really nails the theatrical setting! She brilliantly skewers the egos of amateur actors and directors, giving the reader great characters and a building tension that will obviously end in a murder - it’s just a question of which awful, shallow character will be the victim...
No spoilers, but a very enjoyable murder mystery with snarky, clever dialogue, great characters and a very likable detective in Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby. I look forward to rereading more in this series.
February 14, 2025
I read this for the English Mysteries Club February group read. Was hesitant as I had read the first in this series quite a while ago and wasn’t keen on it. I’ve enjoyed watching all the episodes of Midsomer Murders so thought I’d take a chance on a second book. Liked this one so much better- characters fleshed out more, an intriguing murder and setting. I did notice a difference between the book and tv versions of Barnaby’s daughter, Cully; and his sergeant, Troy. Liked the book version of Cully a lot, she has more personality; Troy didn’t come off as well in the book- liked the tv version better.
May 14, 2019
I think there are fewer installments in the Chief Inspector Barnaby series than there are episodes of Midsomer Murders, but I'll be glad to get to what there are. This one is set with a local theater group who is rehearsing for Amadeus. As I never saw the film, and don't really know the story of Mozart, I might have had a better mental foundation. (I am not a complete philistine; I have listened - and liked - his music, though you might have to tell me I'm hearing Mozart as opposed to Bach or Beethoven.)
Early on, I was cheering for one of the characters to be the murder victim. Another couple of chapters in and I saw another candidate. Maybe one will be killed by the other, I thought. Wouldn't that be justice served? It was past the one-third mark before the murder takes place. The entire cast and stage crew are suspects, some more suspect than others, of course. Barnaby and Troy do their interviewing and nothing makes sense. Nothing, as in why the setting, who had motive and opportunity.
I like how Graham goes about giving us fully-fleshed characters. Some are more so, of course, but even those who get less page time are real enough. My biggest quibble with the whole thing is the Barnaby's wife, Joyce, is part of the theater company. I had a bigger leap to suspend belief in that it seemed obvious he had a huge conflict of interest. This, of course, wasn't mentioned.
I enjoyed this, but it doesn't live up to my top rating for the genre. The Detectives group will reading the next in the series in September and I look forward to it.
Early on, I was cheering for one of the characters to be the murder victim. Another couple of chapters in and I saw another candidate. Maybe one will be killed by the other, I thought. Wouldn't that be justice served? It was past the one-third mark before the murder takes place. The entire cast and stage crew are suspects, some more suspect than others, of course. Barnaby and Troy do their interviewing and nothing makes sense. Nothing, as in why the setting, who had motive and opportunity.
I like how Graham goes about giving us fully-fleshed characters. Some are more so, of course, but even those who get less page time are real enough. My biggest quibble with the whole thing is the Barnaby's wife, Joyce, is part of the theater company. I had a bigger leap to suspend belief in that it seemed obvious he had a huge conflict of interest. This, of course, wasn't mentioned.
I enjoyed this, but it doesn't live up to my top rating for the genre. The Detectives group will reading the next in the series in September and I look forward to it.
February 21, 2017
Ova mi nije tako sjela kao prva, valjda se nisam uspio uživjeti u taj kazališni 'milleu', a bilo je i manje Barnabyja. no još uvijek dobra knjiga.
August 28, 2016
I had just read the first in this series, and really enjoyed it (see my review at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), so I went on to the next in the series -- this book.
What a contrast! The first book was written in a literate style, admittedly with many words I had to look up (and I consider that I have a pretty good vocabulary), and some literary references (including one from a 17th century playwright). I don't mind being challenged in this way, and I found that looking up the unfamiliar words and references was interesting.
This book went overboard -- in the writing, and in the characterization, and in the literary references. The whole book centered around an amateur theatrical production of Peter Shaffer's "Amadeus", which is a play that would be a challenge for any theatrical group, let alone this less than stellar one. I found the writing irritating -- instead of entertaining, like the previous book, it seemed to have poured it on to add more unnecessarily arcane words, lots of attempts at humorous phrases (but rather too many, and also too arcane). I found the whole thing overwritten, perhaps in an attempt to make the book amusing, but I think that backfired and, to me, it made it just annoying and patronizing. I know that readers of British murder mysteries of the Agatha Christie school expect their writing to be literate, but... For example, not too many books use the word 'simulacrum'; this book uses it at least twice. Late in the book, there is an almost throw-away line that is basically a quote from Gilbert and Sullivan's "Pirates of Penzance" -- 'a policeman's lot is not a happy one', seemingly thrown in for another attempt a light humor (and without attribution; you presumably 'just had to know'). Normally, I like humor, but not when it's so all-encompassing, and done in such a patronizing way. Another reference, early on, was to "Martern aller Arten", which, if you look it up, means "Tortures of all kinds", and is an aria from Mozart's "The Abduction from the Seraglio". That seems particularly apropos for this book -- both to Amadeus, and the way the book is written. (It also means that not paying attention to the words and references in this book will cause you to miss out on the details, and the attempts at humor. Of course, you may not care...)
Then there was the large and confusing set of people. I think there was over-characterization, too, with a large group of people (the amateur theatrical group), who were uniformly unpleasant characters (with a very few exceptions). I suppose it was "character development", but it took until halfway through the book before the murder took place, by which time I was nearly ready to give up, not caring much who would be murdered or the identity of the murderer -- it could have been anyone, which I guess was the author's intent.
Then came the investigation by DCI Barnaby and his annoying sidekick, Troy. There followed a lot of interviewing of theater people, all of whom seemed incapable of acting like reasonable people. When Barnaby finally figures out the basics of how the crime was perpetrated, and by whom, the author does do a good job of not letting on until close to the end of the book. But the reader doesn't seem to be given much help in figuring it out; when an author leaves out some critical information until the very end, well, some readers of mysteries consider that cheating.
I was startled by the contrast between this book, and its predecessor. The first book was very enjoyable and effective, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. This one was overwritten to the point of annoyance, and I was glad to finish it; I did not enjoy it.
I'll probably move on to the next book in the series to see how things move on -- whether they improve, or deteriorate, or stay in this mold.
And I can't wait to see how Midsomer Murders does this one for TV. They will, presumably, have to simplify it, and remove a lot of references and arcane language.
What a contrast! The first book was written in a literate style, admittedly with many words I had to look up (and I consider that I have a pretty good vocabulary), and some literary references (including one from a 17th century playwright). I don't mind being challenged in this way, and I found that looking up the unfamiliar words and references was interesting.
This book went overboard -- in the writing, and in the characterization, and in the literary references. The whole book centered around an amateur theatrical production of Peter Shaffer's "Amadeus", which is a play that would be a challenge for any theatrical group, let alone this less than stellar one. I found the writing irritating -- instead of entertaining, like the previous book, it seemed to have poured it on to add more unnecessarily arcane words, lots of attempts at humorous phrases (but rather too many, and also too arcane). I found the whole thing overwritten, perhaps in an attempt to make the book amusing, but I think that backfired and, to me, it made it just annoying and patronizing. I know that readers of British murder mysteries of the Agatha Christie school expect their writing to be literate, but... For example, not too many books use the word 'simulacrum'; this book uses it at least twice. Late in the book, there is an almost throw-away line that is basically a quote from Gilbert and Sullivan's "Pirates of Penzance" -- 'a policeman's lot is not a happy one', seemingly thrown in for another attempt a light humor (and without attribution; you presumably 'just had to know'). Normally, I like humor, but not when it's so all-encompassing, and done in such a patronizing way. Another reference, early on, was to "Martern aller Arten", which, if you look it up, means "Tortures of all kinds", and is an aria from Mozart's "The Abduction from the Seraglio". That seems particularly apropos for this book -- both to Amadeus, and the way the book is written. (It also means that not paying attention to the words and references in this book will cause you to miss out on the details, and the attempts at humor. Of course, you may not care...)
Then there was the large and confusing set of people. I think there was over-characterization, too, with a large group of people (the amateur theatrical group), who were uniformly unpleasant characters (with a very few exceptions). I suppose it was "character development", but it took until halfway through the book before the murder took place, by which time I was nearly ready to give up, not caring much who would be murdered or the identity of the murderer -- it could have been anyone, which I guess was the author's intent.
Then came the investigation by DCI Barnaby and his annoying sidekick, Troy. There followed a lot of interviewing of theater people, all of whom seemed incapable of acting like reasonable people. When Barnaby finally figures out the basics of how the crime was perpetrated, and by whom, the author does do a good job of not letting on until close to the end of the book. But the reader doesn't seem to be given much help in figuring it out; when an author leaves out some critical information until the very end, well, some readers of mysteries consider that cheating.
I was startled by the contrast between this book, and its predecessor. The first book was very enjoyable and effective, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. This one was overwritten to the point of annoyance, and I was glad to finish it; I did not enjoy it.
I'll probably move on to the next book in the series to see how things move on -- whether they improve, or deteriorate, or stay in this mold.
And I can't wait to see how Midsomer Murders does this one for TV. They will, presumably, have to simplify it, and remove a lot of references and arcane language.
November 4, 2012
The local amateur dramatic group is rehearsing for Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus and Joyce Barnaby, wife of Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby, has a small part in the production along with being wardrobe mistress. Her husband is helping with painting the scenery. But relations between the actors are not all they might be and Harold Winstanley, the director, is putting people’s backs up and is as usual very full of himself. Tensions rise as the first night approaches leading to a headline performance though not for the reasons which might have satisfied Harold’s dream of the lime light.
Tom Barnaby finds himself with a difficult case of murder to investigate. He knows all the suspects and the victim and at first thinks this may give him an advantage but he soon realises it just complicates the issue and he can’t see people as they really are. I found this book absorbing reading because the plotting is excellent and the characters well drawn. I found the motivations convincing and the whole thing kept me guessing until almost the end. I worked out who had done it bit not how or why.
This is the second book in the author’s Tom Barnaby series and it is even better than the first, in my opinion. I enjoy the touches of humour and the love hate relationship between Barnaby and his sidekick DS Troy with his overt prejudices and off colour jokes. I like the small town background where many things appear to be out in the open and yet it is all too easy for people to misinterpret things they have seen and people they know. I recommend this series if you like your crime novels in the classic mould with not too much on the page violence and bad language.
Tom Barnaby finds himself with a difficult case of murder to investigate. He knows all the suspects and the victim and at first thinks this may give him an advantage but he soon realises it just complicates the issue and he can’t see people as they really are. I found this book absorbing reading because the plotting is excellent and the characters well drawn. I found the motivations convincing and the whole thing kept me guessing until almost the end. I worked out who had done it bit not how or why.
This is the second book in the author’s Tom Barnaby series and it is even better than the first, in my opinion. I enjoy the touches of humour and the love hate relationship between Barnaby and his sidekick DS Troy with his overt prejudices and off colour jokes. I like the small town background where many things appear to be out in the open and yet it is all too easy for people to misinterpret things they have seen and people they know. I recommend this series if you like your crime novels in the classic mould with not too much on the page violence and bad language.
January 25, 2025
A massive disappointment this one. Book #1 of the Barnaby mysteries genuinely surprised me how much I enjoyed it. The characters, the plot and the pacings were absolutely perfect...Then we come to Book #2. What a difference a novel makes.
Chief Inspector Barnaby and Sergeant Troy are in the audience when a much hated lead actor in an amateur dramatics society dies at his own hand. However, this is no suicide. A prop has been manipulated deliberately to kill the actor, but by whom...?
When engaged with a book and with available time, I can normally read an average length book it in a day. This one took three days and that's simply because I was so utterly bored. The murder doesn't happen until 2/5th through the book (Page 140), Barnaby takes charge makings it a homicide investigation even though I see little evidence to justify that decision and then we have exposition aplenty about characters I really didn't care for; with poor simpering Deirdre the main culprit.
I am all for developing characters and the author is clearly immensely talented in that respect, but there are pages upon pages of detail about characters that just goes nowhere.
Add to this the denouement is done a little too swiftly and wrapped up a little too neatly for me to believe, this is not a book that will warrant a re-read. I have bought the rest in the series so hopefully it will improve, but this was an absolute stinker for me. Just my personal opinion obviously, but following the first novel this was a drastic drop in quality.
Chief Inspector Barnaby and Sergeant Troy are in the audience when a much hated lead actor in an amateur dramatics society dies at his own hand. However, this is no suicide. A prop has been manipulated deliberately to kill the actor, but by whom...?
When engaged with a book and with available time, I can normally read an average length book it in a day. This one took three days and that's simply because I was so utterly bored. The murder doesn't happen until 2/5th through the book (Page 140), Barnaby takes charge makings it a homicide investigation even though I see little evidence to justify that decision and then we have exposition aplenty about characters I really didn't care for; with poor simpering Deirdre the main culprit.
I am all for developing characters and the author is clearly immensely talented in that respect, but there are pages upon pages of detail about characters that just goes nowhere.
Add to this the denouement is done a little too swiftly and wrapped up a little too neatly for me to believe, this is not a book that will warrant a re-read. I have bought the rest in the series so hopefully it will improve, but this was an absolute stinker for me. Just my personal opinion obviously, but following the first novel this was a drastic drop in quality.
March 15, 2023
“Pitying people isn’t a kindness. It makes them supine. And those who seek it don’t deserve respect.”
After almost two years, I am back to the DCI Barnaby mysteries! I read The Killings at Badger’s Drift in mid-2021, and since I recently watched an episode of Midsomer Murders (albeit in incognito as my BBC player page is not loading), I decided to hunt down the next book in the series.
Death of a Hollow Man follows the members of the Causton Amateur Dramatic Society (CADS) as they prepare for the performance of Amadeus. Key to the whole show is a sharp razor that Mozart uses to commit suicide. Of course, the blade is taped so that it doesn’t hurt anyone… until it does and someone dies on opening night. Luckily for DCI Tom Barnaby, he’s watching the performance of Amadeus as his wife is a member of CADS and he and his deputy sergeant Troy are on the scene immediately.
I did not quite notice this in the first book, but I found Death of a Hollow Man to be a very character-focused book. Each chapter cycles through multiple viewpoints of the various members of CADS and we are basically following their journey. On one hand, it means that the murder is very organic and grows out of the existing tensions within the group. On the other hand, it also means that if you aren’t invested in these characters and keen to follow their stories, you’ll probably be bored with this even before the killing happens!
Personally, I enjoyed the characters! Many of them were unpleasant, but I think Nicholas, the young man who wants to be an actor after seeing a play, and Deidre, the often put-down assistant director, were fascinating and I was rooting for them. They are both people who put up with a lot of unpleasantness for their dreams and I admired them for that.
The mystery itself was rather decent. It’s a lot of old-fashioned detective work and talking to people to find out their motivations (a little like Poirot, in that respect) and when the reveal came, I was surprised. There are a few pieces of information kept away from the reader, but enough hints given that I felt like I should have gotten it.
Overall, this is another fun read! I’m not sure when I’ll get to the next book in the series, but I’ll probably watch another episode or two of Midsomer Murders sometime soon.
This review was first posted at Eustea Reads
February 25, 2022
Once again, Sergeant Troy is a bit dated of a character in this. However, Caroline Graham is a master at bringing you into these enclosed enclaves of internally focused characters and peering into the drama (literally in this case.)
July 17, 2025
neskatoties uz vietām neveiklo tulkojumu (ievērojami labāks par 1.grāmatas) - un vēl bonusiņš mr Bārnabijam:)
February 12, 2008
Oh, I should never watch the dramatization of a novel if I'm planning to read it, because I actually knew the identity of the killer before I started. I love the Inspector Barnaby murder mysteries dramatized on the Biography channel, and they have renewed my interest in Caroline Graham's books which have just been sitting here, unread, on my shelves for years.
So on to this book: who would like it? Anyone who's followed the series on television would enjoy it; anyone who likes British mysteries would also like this one.
The setting is the Causton Amateur Dramatic Society (CADS); the group is currently putting on a production of Amadeus. The dramatis personae include the director, Harold, who is a twit and has an over-inflated sense of his worth to the project (or any project by CADS for that matter), the leading man, Esslyn, who is quite wealthy but yet hated by everyone for his snobbery and pompery; his wife Kitty, a young 20-something; Esslyn's first wife and her husband; Tim & Avery, a gay couple who rent out a room to Nicholas, a young student who desperately wants to succeed in the theater; Deirdre, the girl Friday who does pretty much everything Harold tells her even though he makes ridiculous demands, and who is ridiculed by many of the cast members; and David and Colin Smy, a a young man and his dad. It seems that on opening night, one of these people switched razors from the prop tray so that Esslyn, as Salieri, cuts his throat with a real razor in front of the audience at the end of the play.
Barnaby, who is in the audience because his wife is a member of CADS, takes charge immediately, along with his gripey, complaining sergeant, Troy. But it seems that pretty much everyone has a motive to kill Esslyn, so getting to the bottom of this mystery is tougher than it seems.
Recommended for those who enjoy a mix of cozy/police procedural; it might be good to start with book #1 before reading the second.
So on to this book: who would like it? Anyone who's followed the series on television would enjoy it; anyone who likes British mysteries would also like this one.
The setting is the Causton Amateur Dramatic Society (CADS); the group is currently putting on a production of Amadeus. The dramatis personae include the director, Harold, who is a twit and has an over-inflated sense of his worth to the project (or any project by CADS for that matter), the leading man, Esslyn, who is quite wealthy but yet hated by everyone for his snobbery and pompery; his wife Kitty, a young 20-something; Esslyn's first wife and her husband; Tim & Avery, a gay couple who rent out a room to Nicholas, a young student who desperately wants to succeed in the theater; Deirdre, the girl Friday who does pretty much everything Harold tells her even though he makes ridiculous demands, and who is ridiculed by many of the cast members; and David and Colin Smy, a a young man and his dad. It seems that on opening night, one of these people switched razors from the prop tray so that Esslyn, as Salieri, cuts his throat with a real razor in front of the audience at the end of the play.
Barnaby, who is in the audience because his wife is a member of CADS, takes charge immediately, along with his gripey, complaining sergeant, Troy. But it seems that pretty much everyone has a motive to kill Esslyn, so getting to the bottom of this mystery is tougher than it seems.
Recommended for those who enjoy a mix of cozy/police procedural; it might be good to start with book #1 before reading the second.
August 30, 2020
Once you begin, you can't stop.
I am a huge fan of Midsomer Murder series and watch it over and over again.
This year I decided to read the books in the Inspector Barnaby series. As with the series, once you begin you cannot stop. Why I have waited so long to read them? I could give some clever answers, even valid reasons but yes, here I am. In Afrikaans, we would say... Die agteros kom ook in die kraal.
No matter, I am here.
The book is so much better than the series. I understand that during the filming they cannot convey all the intrigue factors into the story due to time so it was as if I read the story for the first time.
The characters were well-defined, each bringing their own twists and flavours to the plot. Barnaby himself was all that I have expected. Troy was his loveable self and it added to the already growing cast. The blooming romance between Diedre and David balanced the story beautifully as both had some struggles to overcome that made them stronger and brought them closer.
The descriptive writing made for colourful reading always building to get to the end. If you have not read this book, please do, it is worth it.
I am a huge fan of Midsomer Murder series and watch it over and over again.
This year I decided to read the books in the Inspector Barnaby series. As with the series, once you begin you cannot stop. Why I have waited so long to read them? I could give some clever answers, even valid reasons but yes, here I am. In Afrikaans, we would say... Die agteros kom ook in die kraal.
No matter, I am here.
The book is so much better than the series. I understand that during the filming they cannot convey all the intrigue factors into the story due to time so it was as if I read the story for the first time.
The characters were well-defined, each bringing their own twists and flavours to the plot. Barnaby himself was all that I have expected. Troy was his loveable self and it added to the already growing cast. The blooming romance between Diedre and David balanced the story beautifully as both had some struggles to overcome that made them stronger and brought them closer.
The descriptive writing made for colourful reading always building to get to the end. If you have not read this book, please do, it is worth it.
September 30, 2015
This is the second in the Tom Barnaby series, and the second (or third) time I've read it. The first in the series didn't hold up that well, so I was nervous when I began this one, but oh, it is so wonderful. Graham does an amazing job developing fully-fleshed characters, even including fully-fleshed animal characters. I cared about what happened to these people. The murder didn't occur until after page 150, and mythical no-no in mysteries, and that didn't matter to me. The stakes were the relationships and wishes and goals of the characters. I wanted to read to see what would happen and who would be affected. I love this book and look forward to the third.
June 1, 2025
Malo drugačiji krimić od ovih modernih gdje se sakati, muči, krvi posvuda… Piše na naslovnici da je u maniri Agathe Christie. Davno sam čitala Agathu pa se baš i ne sjećam njenog stila pisanja, ali ova knjiga mi je bila baš zgodna. Ugodno me iznenadila.
Na početku upoznajemo glumačku skupinu koja se priprema za izvedbu nove predstave. Taj početak me se nije baš nešto dojmio i uplašila sam se da će mi knjiga biti dosadna. Međutim brzo sam bila uvučena u priču. Prva i jedina smrt se dogodi tek negdje oko sredine. Dotad Graham što bi rekli “postavlja scenu”. Upoznajemo redatelja, sve glumce, radnike iza scene i obitelji svih njih. Saznajemo i nekakvu pozadinu i okvirnu priču svih aktera. A saznajemo tko je umišljen, tko misli da je bogom dan, tko šefuje, koga ne vole… Priča se polako zapetljava kako pripremu predstave privode kraju i kulminira na prvoj izvedbi za publiku. Tada na scenu stupa inspektor Barnaby koji je bio u gledalištu jer i njegova žena glumi u predstavi te on i kolega Troy polako otpetljavaju klupko. Saznajemo i tko koga vara s kim i tko je u koga zaljubljen. Svi sumnjaju jedni u druge, svatko nešto krije. Imamo tu i jednu obiteljsku frku koja se recimo sretno završi. I naravno na kraju Barnaby i Troy otkriju tko je kriv. I opet sam kalkulirala, premišljala se, razmatrala, imala nekoliko različitih osumnjičenih, ali nisam uspjela pogoditi krivca. Zadovoljna.
Orilium Spring Equinox 2025. – Spells & Incantations: Spell Copy-Paste – word from your last book title (Hollowpox) – HOLLOW (Death of a Hollow Man)
Globalni ciljevi: nastavk serijala
Na početku upoznajemo glumačku skupinu koja se priprema za izvedbu nove predstave. Taj početak me se nije baš nešto dojmio i uplašila sam se da će mi knjiga biti dosadna. Međutim brzo sam bila uvučena u priču. Prva i jedina smrt se dogodi tek negdje oko sredine. Dotad Graham što bi rekli “postavlja scenu”. Upoznajemo redatelja, sve glumce, radnike iza scene i obitelji svih njih. Saznajemo i nekakvu pozadinu i okvirnu priču svih aktera. A saznajemo tko je umišljen, tko misli da je bogom dan, tko šefuje, koga ne vole… Priča se polako zapetljava kako pripremu predstave privode kraju i kulminira na prvoj izvedbi za publiku. Tada na scenu stupa inspektor Barnaby koji je bio u gledalištu jer i njegova žena glumi u predstavi te on i kolega Troy polako otpetljavaju klupko. Saznajemo i tko koga vara s kim i tko je u koga zaljubljen. Svi sumnjaju jedni u druge, svatko nešto krije. Imamo tu i jednu obiteljsku frku koja se recimo sretno završi. I naravno na kraju Barnaby i Troy otkriju tko je kriv. I opet sam kalkulirala, premišljala se, razmatrala, imala nekoliko različitih osumnjičenih, ali nisam uspjela pogoditi krivca. Zadovoljna.
Orilium Spring Equinox 2025. – Spells & Incantations: Spell Copy-Paste – word from your last book title (Hollowpox) – HOLLOW (Death of a Hollow Man)
Globalni ciljevi: nastavk serijala
June 19, 2014
I have been on a Midsomer Murders binge lately. Being laid up off and on with my ankle injury, I have watched the whole series on Acorn TV and loved it. I finally decided to start reading the books. This is the second in the book series.
An all round good mystery read, Death of a Hollow Man, was adapted very closely in the TV series. The characters of Barnaby, Joyce, Cully and Troy were all here. Cully didn’t have much space devoted to her but the reader still develops a sense of who she is as a person from her father’s thoughts. I also developed more insight into Joyce’s character than I had from the TV show. Barnaby himself is a great protagonist and detective.
The other characters, suspects and villains, are laid out with twists and turns of the plot including red herrings. The sense of place is well developed, which is important in a village mystery. The reader gets a good feel for the social dynamics and character of the village.
Highly recommended read, I just wish I would have read them first before watching the series, but they are enjoyable nonetheless.
An all round good mystery read, Death of a Hollow Man, was adapted very closely in the TV series. The characters of Barnaby, Joyce, Cully and Troy were all here. Cully didn’t have much space devoted to her but the reader still develops a sense of who she is as a person from her father’s thoughts. I also developed more insight into Joyce’s character than I had from the TV show. Barnaby himself is a great protagonist and detective.
The other characters, suspects and villains, are laid out with twists and turns of the plot including red herrings. The sense of place is well developed, which is important in a village mystery. The reader gets a good feel for the social dynamics and character of the village.
Highly recommended read, I just wish I would have read them first before watching the series, but they are enjoyable nonetheless.
November 20, 2024
Death of a Hollow Man by Caroline Graham is the 2nd book in the Chief Inspector Barnaby Mystery series. Opening night of Amadeus at the Causton theatre sees the dramatic death of the lead actor after the substitution of a prop. A superb mystery. Midsommer Murders is one of my favourite television series but reading the books is so much better. I love the portrayal of all the characters and getting to know them better. An enjoyable and entertaining mystery.
June 3, 2025
Ich weiß gar nicht, wo genau ich anfangen soll. Zunächst einmal erreignet sich der einzige Mord erst nach der hälfte des buches, was natürlich einerseits spannung auslösen könnte, aber hier eher zu ungeduld geführt hat.
Das buch hat eine beeindruckende menge an charakteren, keiner davon besonders sympathisch (ganz klar MASSE statt KLASSE). Hier für alle Interessierten eine kleine Darstellung (enthält kleine Spoiler!!):
1. Tom: immernoch nervig, wenn er sich immer über die fehlenden Kochkünste von joyce aufregt, könnte ER ja auch einfach mal kochen. Waixer.
2. Troy: Ein extremer unsympath. Sehr homophob, dumm, geht fremd, macho getue. In den Serien wird er eher als lieb-dümmlich dargestellt, hier einfach nur scheiße.
3. harold: nerviger, aggressiver narzisst
4. esslyn: ultra scheiße, er hat sein schicksal verdient (das war aber auch so gewollt, niemand hatte mitleid mit ihm)
5. kitty: einfach nur nervig, billig und willig, dabei ein schlechter mensch.
6. tim: shut UP!!! sei mal nett omg, so anstrengend und PEINLICH
7. avery: sehr stereotypisch homosexuell dargestellt, was keinen spaß beim lesen gemacht hat. nervige person.
8. nicholas: DUMM und laut, hör AUF. nobody cares.
9. joyce: ja mal wieder zu gut für diese welt, bla bla bla. bisschen übertrieben, dass gesagt wird, sie kann keinen kaffee machen aber go off…
10. cully: piss OFFFFF also irgendwann ist es auch genug mit ‚wow, cully ist so schön, atemberaubend, schlau, gerissen‘ ich finde sie einfach nur nervig. auch in der serie bin ich ein absoluter cully hater!!!
Genug aufgeregt….. alles in allem .. ok. alles nervige schauspieler. spielt halt in einem theater. Auflösung war etwas anticlimactic. Die Sache mit dem Kochbuch fand ich extrem unnötig. Ist leider nicht mit dem ersten Fall zu vergleichen.
LG
Das buch hat eine beeindruckende menge an charakteren, keiner davon besonders sympathisch (ganz klar MASSE statt KLASSE). Hier für alle Interessierten eine kleine Darstellung (enthält kleine Spoiler!!):
1. Tom: immernoch nervig, wenn er sich immer über die fehlenden Kochkünste von joyce aufregt, könnte ER ja auch einfach mal kochen. Waixer.
2. Troy: Ein extremer unsympath. Sehr homophob, dumm, geht fremd, macho getue. In den Serien wird er eher als lieb-dümmlich dargestellt, hier einfach nur scheiße.
3. harold: nerviger, aggressiver narzisst
4. esslyn: ultra scheiße, er hat sein schicksal verdient (das war aber auch so gewollt, niemand hatte mitleid mit ihm)
5. kitty: einfach nur nervig, billig und willig, dabei ein schlechter mensch.
6. tim: shut UP!!! sei mal nett omg, so anstrengend und PEINLICH
7. avery: sehr stereotypisch homosexuell dargestellt, was keinen spaß beim lesen gemacht hat. nervige person.
8. nicholas: DUMM und laut, hör AUF. nobody cares.
9. joyce: ja mal wieder zu gut für diese welt, bla bla bla. bisschen übertrieben, dass gesagt wird, sie kann keinen kaffee machen aber go off…
10. cully: piss OFFFFF also irgendwann ist es auch genug mit ‚wow, cully ist so schön, atemberaubend, schlau, gerissen‘ ich finde sie einfach nur nervig. auch in der serie bin ich ein absoluter cully hater!!!
Genug aufgeregt….. alles in allem .. ok. alles nervige schauspieler. spielt halt in einem theater. Auflösung war etwas anticlimactic. Die Sache mit dem Kochbuch fand ich extrem unnötig. Ist leider nicht mit dem ersten Fall zu vergleichen.
LG
August 27, 2023
I might be biased because I listened to the audiobook, and the narration brought the characters to life and I loved it. Compared to the show, it’s definitely more character driven which I really enjoyed!
October 8, 2023
Labai gerai. Lėtai lėtai, niekur neskubant, nusikaltimas įvyksta maždaug ties knygos viduriu. Nežinau, ar perskaityčiau akimis, bet klausymas ramina, įtraukia, knygos ritmas užsiūbuoja ir padeda atsipalaiduoti
June 4, 2020
An intricate and somewhat unlikely plot, but once again the enjoyment here is in the characters and the private reflections of both Inspector Barnaby and his sidekick, Sergeant Troy.
April 18, 2023
Sem što Barnabi nekako fali u ovoj knjizi, sve ostalo je na svom mestu...
Sem što prođe puno vremena do prvog ubistva. Nisam navikao da moram tolko da se strpim :P
Cheers.
Sem što prođe puno vremena do prvog ubistva. Nisam navikao da moram tolko da se strpim :P
Cheers.
March 5, 2024
As a theatre person, I do love drama, and that's what the reader gets in abundance with the second Inspector Barnaby mystery. Set in the local theatre, this mystery has drama, twists, sarcasm, gossip and even love! This is a wonderful series and a must for any mystery fan!
October 6, 2024
Well. I am back to reading these goofy books, as I have pretty much finished watching the entire series. They deserve to be read carefully or else you might miss a subtle little joke here or there. This story is about the death of an obnoxious member of an amateur theatrical group. Almost nobody could stand him, but no one could have pulled off the murder on stage in front of a live audience.
May 1, 2025
Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby and Sergeant Troy are back in the second book in the series. Here, they are in the audience at the local amateur theater production (in which Barnaby's wife Joyce plays a role) when the disliked lead actor dies by his own hand in the climax of the play. However, this is not a suicide, nor an accident, but murder. But who tampered with the prop to such a deadly end, and why?
I've now read two Midsomer books, and am finding that I enjoy them more filmed. Not that these are bad books, and not that I don't find things irritating about the show either. Just overall, I like the filmed version better.
For starters (and something particularly apparent in this one), rather like Dickens or Tom Clancy, the filming trims down a lot of the extraneous chatter in the narration and makes it more palatable. At least in my opinion. This was particularly apparent in this one. I think she was going for a "character driven" case, but it just felt like we spent forever with these rather unlikable people with nothing much really happening. Even the murder itself didn't happen til nearly halfway through (page 133 of 305 - 38%). Lots of dithering with these characters before and after the murder, with lots of "character detail" that has nothing to do with the case, even as a red herring. And there's only the one murder (not that there needs to be more than one, but the second murder in the dramatization did help the murder get solved and feel more satisfying). Here, there's all that "character detail" filler, and then it felt like Barnaby was at the solution. It didn't feel like the reader was given the clues as well. More like we were with the characters watching Barnaby give the solution, rather than seeing all the pieces with him. I don't know if I'm explaining that well, but it just left it very unsatisfying as a mystery.
Also better in the show? Side charcters. Cully is more blunt and caustic here, and not particularly likable. Thankfully she's been a minor role in the books so far, but in the show, while she's still outspoken at times, she's warmer overall and much more like someone you'd actually want to spend time with. She just seems to push herself and her opinions out too much. Troy, on the other hand, is outright awful in the books. He's sexist, homophobic, chain-smoking, and cheating (yes, he's married here). He has some of these qualities in the show (like the attitude towards homosexuals), but it's more awkward and less hateful. And he's definitely not a skirt-chasing misogynist. Signs of the time, I think - reflecting both attitudes that were semi-acceptable at the time (over 30 years ago) and also trying to contrast him with Barnaby's calm approach. Either way, he's a horrible character and I hate seeing the slightly goofy, likeable young sgt from the show as this sexist, aggressive, arrogant jerk.
There are some things I do like better in the books, though. While Troy and Cully are much more likeable in the show, I like Joyce and her relationship with Barnaby better in the books. In the books, Tom is the one who paints and gardens, while Joyce has her hobbies and talents. In the show, Tom really doesn't have anything other than work, and Joyce has all these hobbies. She seems like a dabbler, much more flighty than she does in the books. And their relationship seems more genuine here. You see how Tom loves her, even with her horrible cooking. In the show, her cooking is still a Thing, but you don't see all the other things that he loves about her, so he comes off as just a bit of a jerk to his wife.
Overall, there are things I like about each the show and the books. I liked the first book much better. It felt like more of a mystery, if that makes sense - better pacing, more suspense. Worth a read, I suppose, but other series I like better. We'll see how the series goes from here.
I've now read two Midsomer books, and am finding that I enjoy them more filmed. Not that these are bad books, and not that I don't find things irritating about the show either. Just overall, I like the filmed version better.
For starters (and something particularly apparent in this one), rather like Dickens or Tom Clancy, the filming trims down a lot of the extraneous chatter in the narration and makes it more palatable. At least in my opinion. This was particularly apparent in this one. I think she was going for a "character driven" case, but it just felt like we spent forever with these rather unlikable people with nothing much really happening. Even the murder itself didn't happen til nearly halfway through (page 133 of 305 - 38%). Lots of dithering with these characters before and after the murder, with lots of "character detail" that has nothing to do with the case, even as a red herring. And there's only the one murder (not that there needs to be more than one, but the second murder in the dramatization did help the murder get solved and feel more satisfying). Here, there's all that "character detail" filler, and then it felt like Barnaby was at the solution. It didn't feel like the reader was given the clues as well. More like we were with the characters watching Barnaby give the solution, rather than seeing all the pieces with him. I don't know if I'm explaining that well, but it just left it very unsatisfying as a mystery.
Also better in the show? Side charcters. Cully is more blunt and caustic here, and not particularly likable. Thankfully she's been a minor role in the books so far, but in the show, while she's still outspoken at times, she's warmer overall and much more like someone you'd actually want to spend time with. She just seems to push herself and her opinions out too much. Troy, on the other hand, is outright awful in the books. He's sexist, homophobic, chain-smoking, and cheating (yes, he's married here). He has some of these qualities in the show (like the attitude towards homosexuals), but it's more awkward and less hateful. And he's definitely not a skirt-chasing misogynist. Signs of the time, I think - reflecting both attitudes that were semi-acceptable at the time (over 30 years ago) and also trying to contrast him with Barnaby's calm approach. Either way, he's a horrible character and I hate seeing the slightly goofy, likeable young sgt from the show as this sexist, aggressive, arrogant jerk.
There are some things I do like better in the books, though. While Troy and Cully are much more likeable in the show, I like Joyce and her relationship with Barnaby better in the books. In the books, Tom is the one who paints and gardens, while Joyce has her hobbies and talents. In the show, Tom really doesn't have anything other than work, and Joyce has all these hobbies. She seems like a dabbler, much more flighty than she does in the books. And their relationship seems more genuine here. You see how Tom loves her, even with her horrible cooking. In the show, her cooking is still a Thing, but you don't see all the other things that he loves about her, so he comes off as just a bit of a jerk to his wife.
Overall, there are things I like about each the show and the books. I liked the first book much better. It felt like more of a mystery, if that makes sense - better pacing, more suspense. Worth a read, I suppose, but other series I like better. We'll see how the series goes from here.
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