Author: Peter Robinson Year: 1999 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Mystery, Award winners, Thriller, Detective Culture: Canada
Purchase/reserch links:
ISBNs: 9780380794775 0380794772 |
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From the publisher (source: The Internet Book List):
Estranged from his carping wife, and still in the doghouse with petty Chief Constable Jeremiah Riddle after his freelance investigations in Blood at the Root (1997), Eastvale's Chief Inspector Alan Banks doesn't expect much good news and his worst fears seem confirmed when Jimmy Riddle packs him off to Harksmere, where a drought and an inquisitive boy have combined to reveal a 50-year-old corpse under the rotting floor of a building no longer submerged in the parched Thornfield Reservoir. There's clearly no glory to be won solving so ancient a case, especially when the local investigating force consists of one sergeant, Anne Cabbot, and almost everyone who might know what happened in the abandoned village of Hobb's End is now as dead as the village itself. Starting with hints from the corpse (some fine, unobtrusive pathological work here), Banks and Cabbot slowly narrow their focus to the the household of Matthew Shackleton a farm boy who went off to the war in 1941 after marrying lively land girl Gloria Stringer and of his sister Gwen. Meantime, mystery novelist Vivian Elmsley, hearing of the grisly find beneath the reservoir, cowers (why?) in anticipation of Banks's knock at her own door. Crosscutting dexterously between past and present, courtesy of Vivian's memoir of the days when the countryside was shorn of its native males and overrun by charming Yanks, Robinson delicately reveals a web of passion and pain whose pattern still isn't complete. If the plot's outline echoes that of Reginald Hill's On Beulah Height (1998), the grand scale and warm compassion of Banks's tenth case vault him into Hill's select company. For all his troubles at home, this is Banks's finest hour.
This book is part of the "Inspector Banks" series. Here are some other books from this series:
 | "In the Dark Places" First published in 2014 Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: |
 | "Watching the Dark" First published in 2012 Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: |
 | "Bad Boy" First published in 2010 Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: |
 | "Cornelius Jubb" First published in 2009 Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: |
 | "Like a Virgin" First published in 2009 Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: |
 | "The Price of Love" First published in 2009 Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: |
 | "Friend of the Devil" First published in 2007 Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: |
 | "Piece of My Heart" First published in 2006 Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: |
 | "Strange Affair" First published in 2004 Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: |
 | "Playing with Fire" First published in 2003 Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: |
 | "Close To Home" First published in 2002 Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: |
 | "Aftermath" First published in 2001 Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: |
 | "Cold is the Grave" First published in 2000 Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: |
 | "Blood at the Root" First published in 1997 Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: |
 | "Innocent Graves" First published in 1996 Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: |
 | "Final Account" First published in 1994 Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: |
 | "Wednesday's Child" First published in 1992 Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: |
 | "Past Reason Hated" First published in 1992 Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: |
 | "A Necessary End" First published in 1990 Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: |
 | "The Hanging Valley" First published in 1989 Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: |
 | "A Dedicated Man" First published in 1988 Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: |
 | "Gallows View" First published in 1987 Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: |
 | "Careless Love" Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: |
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