Summer That Never Was: AND Cold is the Grave

DCI Alan Banks is tired of life in the Yorkshire constabulary, and is ready to move on. However, something strange happens when his boss asks him to quietly find out what has become of his runaway daughter. It seems that young Emily has started out on a life of adventure, partying and living with a big-time villain. And then, when people start turning up dead, it looks as though Banks has chanced upon a major criminal enterprise. Banks must get to the bottom of this strange and murky case, and what he finds along the way is filled with unpleasant surprises. This is the eleventh of Peter Robinson's Alan Banks mysteries, and does a good job of upholding the quality of the series. I love mysteries of all sorts, and I must say that I loved this book. I found the storyline to be quite interesting, and I liked the characters. Some authors spend too much time on character development, spending page after page focusing on the detective's home life and family and so forth, but I thought that Mr. Robinson did a great job of balancing everything out. So, let me just say that I really liked this book, finding it to be an interesting mystery with lots of twists. I highly recommend it.

The last couple of Banks novels saw him in increasing difficulty with his disastrous relationship with his hostile chief constable Jeremiah Riddle. Something was going to have to give and here it does, if in a rather unexpected way. Riddle hates Banks, it's pretty clear, but grudgingly has to admit he's an awfully good detective. SO when he comes across a picture of his runaway teenage daughter Emily on a pornographic website, it is Banks he turns to, pleading with him to go check up on her. Off goes Banks to London, where he meets the promo website manager, the ex-flatmate, the ex-boyfriend and the extremely unpleasant gangster Barry Clough who has lately taken over the boyfriend role. Eventually Emily opts to let Banks take her home but her problems, alas, are not over. Meanwhile Banks has other things to think off with Annie, his lover from `In a Dry Season' reassigned to his own team at Eastvale and the execution style murder of a local crook. This is another thoroughly enjoyable, dark and engaging procedural from Robinson.

Cold is the GravePeter Robinson2000 Viking 454 pages ISBN 0-670-83901-3A teenager from the Yorkshire Dales runs away to London and falls into bad company - not much new in that. But when Peter Robinson uses it as an introduction to one of his chilling mysteries you have a plot has surprising but logical twists and turns and the tale becomes more intriguing by the page.The writer manages to create strong, realistic characters that stay in your mind long after you've finished the book. When you pick up another book in the series you meet them again like old friends. The characters carry the plot, complex as it is, and all the sub-plots as the reader is shown the truth behind the veneer of the successful Chief Constable and his lovely family.This was a book I hated to put down. It is well-paced and carefully structured and both male and female characters are so true that you'd swear you met them just last week. It's rare that a male writer can make female characters seem true to life, especially in their internal monologues (and vice versa - female writers often don't present the male interior monologue well) but this writer is spot on.This book is a real treat from an accomplished mystery writer. Long may the series last.

In this eleventh outing for Inspector Banks, he is asked by his Chief Constable and nemesis to go to London to find the Chief Constable's daughter who ran away from home several months earlier. Locating the daughter is not that difficult, even taking her back to Eastvale is easy. But once she's home a series of events, including several murders, has Banks trying to determine who did what to whom and why. The main suspect is a man who seemingly gets away with any crime to which he puts his mind. Banks is a fortysomething divorced man who is coming to terms with his private life and trying to get his professional life back on track as well, but whose choices that are not the best to succeed at either. Robinson reintroduces Detective Sergeant Annie Cabbot, newly transferred to Banks' neck of the woods. As she and Banks unravel the story behind the murders, it is painstaking police work with no leaps of faith or suppressed major clues that appear later in the book and sprung upon an unsuspecting reader. As the clues are discovered,the reader is privy to them. This is police procedural at its best and a great read that you will be loathe to put down. Even if you don't like British procedurals, you should give this series a try. Reading it from the beginning is best since you'll be able to see Banks grow and change from the first in the series to this one.