One rainy March evening, an anti-nuclear demonstration outside the Eastvale Community Centre turns nasty: the mood of the crowd begins to darken as the weather worsens. Finally the police lose control and violence erupts, leaving one policeman dead with almost a hundred suspects.Detective Chief Inspector Banks is back, investigating his third case in Yorkshire. But things become difficult for him when Superintendent Richard "Dirty Dick" Burgess is sent from London, for political reasons, to lead the investigation. Sifting through a host of unusual suspects and disturbing discoveries about the police themselves, Banks is warned off the case. But the only way he can salvage his career is by beating Burgess to the killer. As the two head for a final confrontation, Banks pieces together the full story behind his most tragic case so far.

On a balmy June night, Kirsten, a young university student, is strolling home through a silent moonlit park when she is viciously attacked.When she awakes in the hospital, she has no recollection of that brutal night. But then slowly, painfully, details reveal themselves -- dreams of two figures, one white and one black, hovering over her; snatches of a strange and haunting song; the unfamiliar texture of a rough and deadly hand ...In another part of the country, Martha Browne arrives in a Yorkshire seaside town, posing as an author doing research for a book. But her research is of a particularly macabre variety. Who is she hunting with such deadly determination? And why?The First Cut is a vivid and compelling psychological thriller, from the author of the critically acclaimed Inspector Banks series.

From BooklistIn the Yorkshire countryside, middle-aged accountant and financial consultant Keith Rothwell is murdered while his wife and daughter are forced to watch. Detective Inspector Alan Banks and his assistant, Constable Susan Gay, are the lead investigators on the case. As Banks and Gay investigate, they reveal the victim to have been a conservative, quiet man virtually devoid of personality and style. But then a beautiful young musician sees Rothwell's picture in the paper and reveals that he had a secret life: as Robert Calvert, the musician's former lover. Meanwhile, Rothwell's financial dealings are coming into focus: he was skimming from one of his clients, a drug-dealing Caribbean dictator, and may have been murdered for his transgressions. The few loose ends to the case trouble Banks, and he pursues them until he draws a surprising conclusion. Tremendous plotting and solid characters make this a superior British procedural from the critically acclaimed author of Wednesday's Child. Wes LukowskyAbout the AuthorPeter Robinson's award-winning novels have been named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly, a Notable Book by the New York Times, and a Page-Turner of the Week by People magazine. Robinson was born and brought up in Yorkshire, England, and now divides his time between North America and Richmond, Yorkshire.

By Canada's premier, bestselling crime fiction writer, the twenty-first book in the much-loved Inspector Banks series, now a television series on PBS, for readers of Ian Rankin and Michael Connelly. A disgraced college lecturer is found murdered with £5,000 in his pocket on a disused railway line near his home. Since being dismissed from his job for sexual misconduct four years previously, he has been living a poverty-stricken and hermit-like existence in this isolated spot. There are many suspects, mostly at the college where he used to teach, but Banks, much to the chagrin of Detective Chief Superintendent Gervaise, soon becomes fixated on Lady Veronica Chalmers, who appears to have links with the victim going back to the early '70s at the University of Essex, then a hotbed of political activism. When Banks suspects that Lady Chalmers is not telling him the whole truth and pushes his inquiries a bit too far, he is brought on the carpet and warned to lay...

A baffling murder on a remote country lane puts Alan Banks and his team to the test in the detective's most intense and gripping case yet – from an author hailed by Louise Penny as "a writer at the top of his game."With Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot investigating the young woman's death, newly promoted Detective Superintendent Banks finds himself taking on the coldest of cases: a fifty-year-old assault allegedly perpetrated by beloved celebrity Danny Caxton. Now Caxton stands accused at the center of a media storm, and it's Banks' job to discover the shocking truth.As more women step forward with accounts of Caxton's manipulation, Banks must piece together decades-old evidence – as the investigation leads him down the darkest of paths...Suspenseful, powerful, and surprising, When the Music's Over is the finest novel to date from one of the foremost suspense writers at work today.

DCI Banks is back - and this time he's investigating the murder of one of his own. The new novel from Number One bestselling author Peter Robinson. Detective Inspector Bill Reid is killed by a crossbow in the tranquil grounds of a police rehabilitation centre, and compromising photos are found in his room. DCI Banks, brought in to investigate, is assailed on all sides. By Joanna Passero, the Professional Standards inspector who insists on shadowing the investigation in case of police corruption. By his own conviction that a policeman shouldn't be deemed guilty without evidence. By Annie Cabbot, back at work after six months' recuperation, and beset by her own doubts and demons. And by an English girl who disappeared in Estonia six years ago, who seems to hold the secret at the heart of this case . . .ReviewPraise for Peter Robinson -- : 'Peter Robinson has for too long, and unfairly, been in the shadow of Ian Rankin; perhaps PIECE OF MY HEART, the latest in the Chief Inspector Banks series, will give him the status he deserves, near, perhaps even at the top of, the British crime writers' league' -- Marcel Berlins, The Times 'Brilliant! ... Gut-wrenching plotting, alongside heart-wrenching portraits of the characters who populate his world, not to mention the top-notch police procedure.' -- Jeffery Deaver 'Classic Robinson: a labyrinthine plot merged with deft characterisation' -- Observer 'Robinson also has a way of undercutting the genre's familiarity. With a deceptively unspectacular language, he sets about the process of unsettling the reader' -- Independent ReviewPraise for Peter Robinson -- : 'Peter Robinson has for too long, and unfairly, been in the shadow of Ian Rankin; perhaps PIECE OF MY HEART, the latest in the Chief Inspector Banks series, will give him the status he deserves, near, perhaps even at the top of, the British crime writers' league' -- Marcel Berlins, The Times 'Brilliant! ... Gut-wrenching plotting, alongside heart-wrenching portraits of the characters who populate his world, not to mention the top-notch police procedure.' -- Jeffery Deaver 'Classic Robinson: a labyrinthine plot merged with deft characterisation' -- Observer 'Robinson also has a way of undercutting the genre's familiarity. With a deceptively unspectacular language, he sets about the process of unsettling the reader' -- Independent

A gripping novella from the New York Times–bestselling author of the Inspector Banks Mysteries and a "master of the art" (TheBoston Globe). Retired Cambridge professor Donald Aitcheson loves scouring antiquarian bookshops for secondhand treasures—as much as he loathes the scribbled marginalia from their previous owners. But when he comes upon an inscription in a volume of Robert Browning's poetry, he's less irritated than disturbed. This wasn't once a gift to an unwitting woman. It was a threat—insidious, suggestively sick, and terribly intriguing. Now Aitcheson's imagination is running wild. Was it a sordid teacher-pupil affair that ended in betrayal? A scorned lover's first salvo in a campaign of terror? The taunt of an obsessive psychopath? Then again, it could be nothing more than a tasteless joke between friends. As his curiosity gets the better of him, Aitcheson can't resist playing...

Amazon.com ReviewDetective chief inspector Alan Banks is a walking midlife crisis, full of rage because of his recently failed marriage, a career crippled by a jealous superior, and problems with his son. In less skilled hands, Banks could have quickly become a royal pain, but Robinson makes him instead a very likable character, who is slightly baffled and bemused by his bad luck. When he criticizes his son Brian's decision to drop out of college to become a rock musician, Banks quickly regrets it--recognizing the same impulses that made him rebel against his own parents, and some of the pain he felt when a college friend died of a drug overdose. The realization that Brian's heavy-metal band is actually quite good brings genuine pleasure to a man whose idea of rock is Love's Forever Changes and other 1970s delights.Banks is assigned to work on a case that the Yorkshire police department considers to be somewhat of a joke. The skeleton of a woman wrapped in World War II blackout curtains has been found in a dried-out reservoir. This man-made watering hole was a village--Hobbs End--that had been flooded many years earlier. Through the journal of a major player we realize early on who the dead woman is, but a large part of the fun is watching Banks and an edgy, attractive female cop put the pieces of the puzzle together. In a Dry Season is a stylish and gently reflective tale of secrets and lies.Banks's other books include Wednesday's Child, Final Account, and Blood at the Root. --Dick AdlerFrom Publishers WeeklyAnyone who loves a good mystery should curl up gratefully with a cuppa to enjoy this rich 10th installment of the acclaimed British police procedural series. Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks, on the skids since the breakup with wife Sandra, languishes in "career Siberia" until old nemesis Chief Constable Riddle sends him to remotest Yorkshire on a "dirty, pointless, dead-end case." It seems a local kid has discovered a skeleton in dried-up Thornfield Reservoir, constructed on the site of the deserted bucolic village of Hobb's End. Banks taps into his familiar network of colleagues to identify the skeleton as that of Gloria Shackleton, a gorgeous, provocative "land girl" who worked on a Hobb's End farm while her husband was off fighting the Japanese decades ago. Apparently, Gloria had been stabbed to death. As Banks and Detective Sergeant Annie Cabbot struggle to re-create the 50-year-old crime scene, wartime Yorkshire, with all its deprivations and depravities, springs to life. (Banks revives, too, showing renewed interest in his job, and in women.) Robinson brilliantly interweaves the story of Banks's investigation with an ambiguous manuscript by detective novelist "Vivian Elmsley," a 70-ish woman once Gloria's sister-in-law. Is the manuscript a memoir of events leading to Gloria's vicious murder, or "all just a story"? Either way, every detail rings true. Once again, Robinson's work stands out for its psychological and moral complexity, its startling evocation of pastoral England and its gritty, compassionate portrayal of modern sleuthing. Agent, Dominick Abel. Author tour. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Without a doubt, the family and friends of fictional sleuths are two of the most endangered species on the planet. Crime novelists seem to have no qualms about sacrificing the people nearest and dearest to their protagonists, if doing so will advance plot development or bestow emotional depth upon their series stars. Peter Robinson continues this ruthless tradition in Strange Affair, his tension-packed 15th novel featuring headstrong British Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks. Still on the mend after the blazing finale of 2004's Playing with Fire, temporarily sworn off whiskey but back to smoking, Banks is interrupted in the midst of brooding over his life and failed relationships by a message from his estranged younger brother, Roy, who says he needs the DCI's help in "a matter of life and death." Concerned, especially since Roy boasts a history of dubious business dealings, Banks leaves Yorkshire for his sibling's home in London, only to find that residence unlocked, Roy's computer missing, and his cell phone left behind. After learning that Roy was last seen stepping into a car with an unidentified man, and receiving on Roy's mobile what appears to be a photo of his only brother slumped over in a chair, the cop fears that a kidnapping has occurred. Meanwhile, back in Eastvale, Banks's colleague and ex-lover, Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot, probes the shooting death of Jennifer Clewes, a 27-year-old family planning center administrator from London who's been found in her car, with the address of Banks's once-ruined (and recently broken into) cottage tucked into her jeans pocket. As Annie seeks to identify Clewes's attacker and determine whether this crime fits a pattern of roadway assaults, she's anxious also to discover what connection Banks may have to the case. But the DCI is frustratingly nowhere to be found. Like 2003's Close to Home, Strange Affair adds some welcome bricks to Banks's back story, this time forcing him to reappraise a brother whom he had long resented and distrusted. Simultaneously, Robinson's latest police procedural delivers artfully contrived, intersecting story lines charged with rumors of international arms dealing, hints of misdeeds at a women's clinic, secondary players so shady they might be invisible after sundown, and insights into just how far Banks's career has distanced him from folks less steeped in the ugly side of mankind. An immensely satisfying mystery, filled with professional risks and personal regrets, this is truly an Affair to remember. --J. Kingston Pierce