Following Peter’s author talk at Huddersfield Town Hall at the back end of 2013, I purchased a signed copy of his latest DCI Banks novel in hardback.
The enigmatic Yorkshire DCI is considering retirement, or a promotion, when a disgraced former lecturer is found murdered on a disused railway near his home. The £5,000 found in his pocket leads the police to think there may be a drug connection as he was well known in the area for being a poor hermit, but the truth is far more complex and could involve the wife of a man with friends in high places.
Background on the case takes the reader to Essex University in the 70s, where local celebrity Veronica Chalmers was a radical for the social classes back then, although she is from a far wealthier family than the pit workers she was trying to politicise and this was the meatiest part of the story for me and I would have loved more to be written on both this and the miners strike.
The sections featuring the beautiful Yorkshire countryside and DS Winsome with the young female former drug addict felt real in what was otherwise a rushed and flat novel. His detail in the music and history of the 70s was enjoyable, but the plot was not big enough to sustain the momentum even though this is a somewhat shorter novel than is the norm.
I have noticed a trend in recent Banks novels in that he seems to be having somewhat of a mid-life crisis and in this book it is most evident. Not only do two of his female colleagues verbally fight over him, but there is a young and beautiful Italian housekeeper that for some unexplained reason falls for him even though her character is distrustful of his motives in regards to her beloved employer. Am I the only one in thinking this does not ring true?
Here's hoping that the next DCI Banks novel takes us back to Peter Robinson's best.
"The past lies like a nightmare upon the present." 6/10
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