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LIII: Peter Robinson, Piece of My Heart (2006)
Naughty - I should be reading for work.
One of the better Banks novels, but thick because it pulls the trick of being two novels in one - the way that Conan Doyle pads out three of the four Sherlock Holmes novels is to have a section set in the past. Here Robinson alternates between a stabbing of a teenager in a sleeping bag at a pop festival in 1969 and the present day killing of somebody or other (a rock journalist it turns out). Banks isn't directly involved in the past case - it's not his history coming back to haunt him - and it's a long way before the threads come together, are fumbled, and then resolved. I wonder if the authors do it because they're bored with their creations?
Even the present day sections switch - midscene even - between Banks and Annie Cabot as focal characters. Cabot and Banks have been lovers, if I recall, but at the moment are just close. Banks is sort of dealing with a death in the family - which seems to involve drinking the victim's wine cellar and driving his Porshe - and his son is back in town, presumably for a thread to be developed in a later novel. The psychologist from the earlier books is mentioned, but remains off stage. Meanwhile there is change at the top as the old Superintendent and is replaced by - gosh wow - the woman in a hurray who may go all the way and doesn't care who she tramples on on the way up and whilst she might disapprove of Banks's methods she knows he gets results
so that as long as he doesn't get caught when he's on his own that's ok by her. There's at least one moment where her new tactics backfire. Ha. that's what you get for promoting women.
But not bad, and less clanking in its resolution.
I have one more in stock - and managed to find Rankin's Set in Darkness and Exit Lines which fit the £2 rule - but I need to be reading seventies stuff.
Naughty - I should be reading for work.
One of the better Banks novels, but thick because it pulls the trick of being two novels in one - the way that Conan Doyle pads out three of the four Sherlock Holmes novels is to have a section set in the past. Here Robinson alternates between a stabbing of a teenager in a sleeping bag at a pop festival in 1969 and the present day killing of somebody or other (a rock journalist it turns out). Banks isn't directly involved in the past case - it's not his history coming back to haunt him - and it's a long way before the threads come together, are fumbled, and then resolved. I wonder if the authors do it because they're bored with their creations?
Even the present day sections switch - midscene even - between Banks and Annie Cabot as focal characters. Cabot and Banks have been lovers, if I recall, but at the moment are just close. Banks is sort of dealing with a death in the family - which seems to involve drinking the victim's wine cellar and driving his Porshe - and his son is back in town, presumably for a thread to be developed in a later novel. The psychologist from the earlier books is mentioned, but remains off stage. Meanwhile there is change at the top as the old Superintendent and is replaced by - gosh wow - the woman in a hurray who may go all the way and doesn't care who she tramples on on the way up and whilst she might disapprove of Banks's methods she knows he gets results
so that as long as he doesn't get caught when he's on his own that's ok by her. There's at least one moment where her new tactics backfire. Ha. that's what you get for promoting women.
But not bad, and less clanking in its resolution.
I have one more in stock - and managed to find Rankin's Set in Darkness and Exit Lines which fit the £2 rule - but I need to be reading seventies stuff.
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