The Hanging Valley

I've read the two most recent books in this series and found this one to be the earliest that was available at my library.Although I missed the later members of the good inspector's investigative team, this is still a well told story. I especially enjoyed how the character of Katie Greenock, an unhappily married woman who was raised by a very strict and putitanly religioous grandmother is portrayed, and she does become a very important part of the puzzle with the information she's withholding. The second part of the book deals with Alan Banks' trip to Canada searching for a missing woman who also holds very important information pertaining to the recent murder being investigated and also to an earlier unsolved slaying which might be connected. Robinson keeps this trip from slowing things down by interspersing Banks' Canadian investigation with events going on in the English village.With only a small field of suspects, the revelation of the murderer isn't a great surprise. That of couse is a disappointment. Also, the ending is quite abrupt and shocking, especially if one hasn't been payng close attention to the stability or lack thereof two principle characters.Not the best that I've read but still quite worth your reading if you enjoy other books in the series.

Peter Robinson grew up in Yorkshire, and is the author of a number of previous novels featuring Inspector Banks. He is the winner of numerous awards in the United States, Britain and Canada, and in 2002 he won the CWA Dagger in the Library. As I also come from Leeds the background to his stories is something that I have experienced first hand and because of this I have a special affection for his books. However they would be first class crime fiction wherever they were based. Chief Inspector Alan Banks is called to a murder scene that is gruesome even to him. Over the years his mind has become conditioned to the dreadful things that one or more human beings can inflict on their fellow man, but the discovery of a faceless corpse in a quiet, seldom visited valley below the village of Swainshead sickens even him. On his arrival he finds that no one is willing to talk and his frustration only grows when the identity of the body is finally revealed. It seems that the body may be connected to an unsolved murder that took place in the same area over five years ago. Among the suspects are the wealthiest and most powerful family in Swainsdale, the Collier brothers and when they start to use their influence to hamper the investigation the Inspector finds himself in a race against time.

Inspector Alan Banks is a big city dropout, now working in the northern dales of England. His personal life is interesting - wife and kids, friends, hobbies, a love of all kinds of music - but, as is true for many detectives, he's really married to his job. Banks is a clever and humane policeman who doesn't like bureaucracy, but who does care about the victims of violent crime and wants to bring justice to the perpetrators. Good plots, good writing, good main and minor characters.

You are kept in suspense right up to the very end of the book. The Hanging Valley is another one of Peter Robinson's excellent Chief Inspector Banks series. I highly recommend this book as well as the other Banks books.

One morning, a solitary walker finds a body in a quiet valley below the village of Swainsdale. The corpse clearly displays signs of a gruesome [demise]- it's as good as faceless - and has apparently lain undiscovered for quite a while. Enter Chief Inspector Alan Banks, straight into an investigation that is already appearing to be dead in the water. No one has any idea who the victim is, or how he got there. Not Sam or Katie Greenock, the couple who run the local guesthouse. Not Freddie Metcalfe, landlord of the local pub. And not either of the Collier brothers, Stephen or Nicholas, the most wealthy family in the area. Then, a curious lead emerges that could help the identify the body, as well as link this crime to another unsolved murder in the area five years before...My, what a good series this is. If you want a contemporary British police mystery with its grounding in the traditional aspects of detective novels, then these early Inspector Banks books really are the place to look. And The Hanging Valley is the best one so far. The plot is excellent. I couldn't really have asked for more from this sort of book. The pacing is great, and there is even a wonderfully interesting trip to Toronto for Banks (investigating a possible lead) which really gives the story a fresh kick. The ending, also, is absolutely excellent, and the final page or so is shocking, taking the book far above more run-of-the-mill traditional British mysteries. I may be in wrong, but I suspect that the finale of this book was really when the series "grew up". The writing is of an exemplary standard (at times, I think Peter Robinson could easily turn himself to more literary fiction and be held in very high regard), and Banks is a strong lead character and is well developed, even if he'd perhaps a little too distant and cool to achieve the popularity of such peers as Rankin's John Rebus. However, this book does have a slight law in that some of the subsidiary characters (other officers, one or two of the suspects, and evens Banks' own family) could still do with quite a bit more development. Though, I'm almost positive that even those flaws will dissolve as this series progresses.