For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed.
Late one night, Sergeant Pete Decker discovers an abandoned toddler wearing blood-stained pyjamas and covered in bee-stings. Decker and his partner Marge Dunn resolve to find her parents, but nothing prepares them for the gruesome mystery they find themselves stirring up.
When L.A. psychologist Alex Delaware receives an elaborate album filled with gruesome crime-scene police photos of a series of apparently unconnected killings, he's stymied. He's also in the midst of a personal crisis Robin, his long suffering partner, has made it clear that it's up to Alex to heal the breach in their relationship that's been caused by his over involvement in criminal investigations. someone much higher up in the department didn't want it to be.
Cross James Merrill, H. P. Lovecraft, and Carlos Castaneda -each imbued with a twenty-first-century aptitude for quantum theory and existential psychology-and you get the voice of Daniel Pinchbeck. And yet, nothing quite prepares us for the lucidity, rationale, and informed audacity of this seeker, skeptic, and cartographer of hidden realms.
No one loved the murdered Dame Myra Mason, long-ago plaything of now senile Benedict Cotterel. Myra's estranged, illegitimate daughter plans a scathing biography; Benedict's dangerously stupid legitimate daughter blames the woman for stealing her father; and Myra's new husband admits to marrying for career advancement. Tucked away upstairs in the Old Rectory, Maudsley, Benedict himself supposedly knows nothing. Barnard shows rare form as usual, investing his English village world with memorable class types, sly quirks, and supporting characters, all limned in masterfully efficient prose.
