The Bones in the Attic [Paperback]

‘Robert Barnard is always original, never repeats himself and has a delectable wit’
Jessica Mann, Daily Telegraph

‘Barnard never disappoints. The psychological suspense is chilling’
The Times

‘Robert Barnard retails this finely suspenseful tale, incorporating the Hitchockian awkwardness of disposing of a body, with spellbinding step-by-step matter-of-factness’
Sunday Times

Latest in Robert Barnard’s hugely popular Charlie Peace series: ‘He plots a mystery as well as any writer alive’ Time Magazine

Moving into an upmarket new home in Leeds, rising radio star Matt Harper is shocked to find the skeleton of a small child in the attic. His grisly discovery takes him back to the summer of 1969, when he lived with his aunt only a few streets away, reawakening dim, vaguely disturbing memories from his childhood.

While Detective Charlie Peace heads up the nominal police investigation into the bones, Matt’s unease leads him to revisit the past in an attempt to solve the mystery himself. Tracking down the other members of a gang of local children he’d briefly belonged to, he gradually unearths a shared secret that has laid buried ever since. Everyone remembers little Lily Fitch’s meetings with her older ‘friend’, and the hippy couple’s baby she wanted to rescue, but Matt can’t help feeling there’s something else they’re holding back. Were the bones in the attic the result of a tragic accident, or has time concealed a more sinister truth?

"Exceptionally well-plotted and written with a stylistic modesty that does the story proud."
'Literary Review'

Moving into an upmarket new home in Leeds, rising radio star Matt Harper is shocked to find the skeleton of a small child in the attic. His grisly discovery takes him back to the summer of 1969, when he lived with his aunt only a few streets away, reawakening dim, disquieting memories from his childhood.

While detective Charlie Peace heads up the nominal police investigation into the bones, Matt revisits the past in an attempt to solve the mystery himself. Tracking down the other members of a gang of local children he'd once belonged to, he gradually unearths a shared secret that has laid buried ever since. Were the bones in the attic the result of a tragic accident, or has time concealed a more sinister truth?

"Barnard never disappoints."
MARCEL BERLINS, 'The Times'

Robert Barnard was born and brought up in Essex. After leaving Oxford he worked as a university lecturer in New South Wales, and then taught in Norwegian universities for seventeen years, returning to England in 1983 to write full time. He and his wife now live in Leeds.