There's a deliberate lack of excessive angst and glamour in Peter Robinson's books about Inspector Alan Banks and his fellow Yorkshire coppers, so first-time readers might think them bland. But under the books' placid surfaces, whole worlds of crime and justice are being worked out. In this ninth book in his increasingly popular series, Robinson gives Banks some serious problems of a personal and professional nature: a neglected wife and a ruthlessly ambitious superior. He also drops Banks into a frighteningly realistic neo-Nazi group called the Albion League, whose activities include drug dealing and murder. Other books in the series available in paperback include Innocent Graves, Final Account, Gallow's View, and Hanging Valley.


The New York Times Book Review, Marilyn Stasio
The green, green hills still soften the landscape of the Yorkshire Dales; but the times (and the crimes) are changing dramatically in the bucolic villages where Peter Robinson sets his sociologically acute police procedurals.


From Kirkus Reviews
It looks like a common enough kind of crime: Outspoken young racist Jason Fox has been beaten and kicked to death in an alley on the way home from the pub where he insulted a trio of Pakistanis. But Mohammed (n‚ George) Mahmood and his friends insist that as much as they disliked Jason Fox, they had nothing to do with his murder, and there's not enough evidence to hold them. So Chief Inspector Alan Banks, more and more on the outs with his wife, plunges into the case, determined to find out who the ``policemen'' were who rummaged through Fox's flat before anyone knew he was dead, and what Fox's neo-Nazi mates in the Albion League know about his death. Unfortunately, the Albion League's headquarters are in Leeds, along with the home of Banks's favorite violist, Pamela Jeffreys--and Chief Constable Jeremiah Riddle's suspicions that Banks keeps returning to Leeds only to make beautiful music together with Pamela hardens into certainty after Banks follows an anonymous tip to Amsterdam on the very weekend when his squad is extracting a confession to the killing. Suspended from his job by Jimmy Riddle, Banks will have to work under the table with Detective Susan Gay (still sadly carrying a torch for him) to prove that sometimes you ought to look a convenient confession right back in the mouth. Though the unending whirl of soap-opera romance in Banks's life can wear thin, his ninth procedural (Innocent Graves, 1996, etc.) is abrim with racial tension, patient detective work, and the hero's appealing decency. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description

Hatred and murder breed in dark places ...

In the long shadows of an alley a young man is murdered, savagely kicked and beaten to death by assailant or assailants unknown. It is a crime shocking in its raw brutality, and its shattering repercussions will be felt throughout a small provincial community on the edge -- because the victim was far from innocent, a youth whose sordid secret life was a tangle of terrifying contradictions and virulent racial hatred. And now a dedicated policeman beset by his own tormenting demons must follow the leads into the rankest pits of man's inhumanity to man -- to catch a killer before his village explodes.


About the Author
Peter Robinson grew up in Yorkshire. His previous Inspector Banks novel, In a Dry Season, was nominated for the Edgar Award, was named a New York Times Notable Book, and won the Anthony Award.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When the brutally beaten body of a young man is found in an alley, Eastvale's Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks and his coleague, Detective Constable Susan Gay, have no choice but to lock up the three Pakistani youths who seemingly started it all after an argument in a pub. But they're out in no time and Banks is in big trouble with the Chief for risking a racial incident with the arrest. Ordered to run the investigation from his desk and leave the legwork to others, Banks' hands are tied and his temper is flaring.

But when disturbing facts start emerging about the victim, Banks can't simply sit at his desk -- and he soon alientates himself from both the investigation and his own department. While his twenty-year marriage crumbles around him, he tries to make sense of a gray world grown ever more bleak and sinister, as he follows a treacherous trail of hate, greed, and twisted philosophy that leads to the darkest pits of man's inhumanity to man.

FROM THE CRITICS

San Francisco Chronicle

Chilling and candid.

New York Times Book Review