Why This Is Hell

Reading XIV: Peter Robinson, Caedmon's Song (1990)

Kirsten has been assaulted and left for dead in a northern town, and when she awakes, she discovers that she is no longer able to have children, and probably can't have penetrative sex. With the aid of a psychotherapist, she remembers the painful trauma.

Martha is posing as a writer in Whitby, looking for someone, and when she finds him, she will kill him. If she finds the right person.

Well, it doesn't take a mastermind to guess that the two threads are connected, and it's pretty apparent early on what the connection is.

Robinson takes a break from the Banks novels - and proves he is no Patricia Highsmith. It needed to be tenser, sharper, darker. I'm not convinced he can write women. This version is a later edition, slightly tinkered with in about 2003. I don't see the point, myself. Let the original speak.

That's the boxset of Robinson finished; onto a Gregory Maguire.

( XII: Peter Robinson, Playing With Fire (2004) )

One more Banks to go in the pile, and then a stand alone novel, but first I will read a Doctor Who novel.

VIII: Peter Robinson, Wednesday's Child (1992?)
IX: Peter Robinson, Dry Bones That Dream (1994?)

Two more Inspector Banks novels - three more to read and then a stand-alone. Of the ones I have anyway. The copyright dates seem odd on these - I suspect they are of the British publication in the mid-1990s, whereas the ones above are Canadian (or the ones Wikipedia give), but don't necessarily mesh with those on Robinson's website.

In Wednesday's Child two people pose as social workers to kidnap a young child and a corpse in found in a disused mine. It wouldn't be a crime novel if the two weren't connected, would it? I get the sense that Robinson doesn't quite trust his readers to pay attention - he reminds us who Jenny the psychologist who Banks nearly had an affair with twice in a dozen pages. But holds attention.

Dry Bones That Dream brings back Dick Burgess, the London cop from A Necessary Death as a rather dull accountant is executed. The accountant turns out to have a second, secret life in Leeds, and to be tied in with international money laundering. The gimmick is pinched from a Sherlock Holmes novel, but I didn't see it coming. The narrative has a bit of political bite, and effort at a story arc is being made; Banks's family develops.

One of the minor cops reads Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelazny.

"In times of hardship, furniture takes a back seat." H'mmm.


IV Peter Robinson, Gallows View (1987)
V Peter Robinson, A Necessary End (1989)
VI Peter Robinson, The Hanging Valley (1989)

On my travels north I noted a cheap boxset of ten Peter Robinson novels, so I thought I'd pick them up where they had less distance to travel. These are Pan reprints, mostly dating from 2007. I've read books 1, 3 and 4 (A Dedicated Man (1988) is absent) of the Inspector Banks series.

Banks is a London detective who has moved north for not entirely specified reasons (a desire for a quieter life is the only real clue) and now works in a town in north/east Yorkshire, possibly somewhere like Ripon, Richmond, Pickering or Selby, but not quite York. As such the temptation is to compare to Dalziel and Pascoe - and, yes, both inspectors are sensitive, cultured men, although we get more of Banks's musical tastes than Pascoe's, with rich family lives. The difference is in the supporting characters - Banks's superintendent is no grotesque and his sergeant isn't the infalliable, famously ugly and gay Edgar Wield. There's a sense of a progressive political agenda here, too, although there is a greater sense of closure than Hill offers (although this may change as the sequence progresses).

Some brief summaries: Gallows View features a peeping tom and a murder, and Banks brings in a university psychologist, Jenny, to provide a Tony-Hill style profile of the suspects. Banks is almost unfaithful with Jenny, and the tension will not be forgotten. Neatly Banks's wife, Sheila, is also a victim of the peeping tom.

A Necessary End: a policeman is stabbed to death at a protest rally, and a semi-corrupt London copper is brought in to solve the case whilst Banks tries to find the real suspect. It doesn't help that Jenny is now going out with one of them. Is this why Banks left London? A darker tone as there is collateral damage.

The Hanging Valley: a few years back there was a murder and a disappearance in a nearby dales village, and Banks is called in to solve a second death, and makes the inevitable connections. This involves him flying to Toronto which is where the Yorkshire-born Robinson lives. I guess the events that ended the book - although I was pleased he dared to close with it.

I like these, although the musical tastes seem to be spreading. Are all detectives in fiction readers? H'mm. There's a reference to Philip K. Dick in one of them. The problem is once we get into exposition in the final chapter - Robinson's characters become ciphers to explain or justify things to each other, and it suddenly turns into a bad melodrama. I hope he gets over it - I don't feel this in the Hill novels or the McDermids.

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PS - a pile of Rankins in the local Oxfam at just under two quid. They fit the infamous two quid rule, but I haven't read the one (Knots and Cross?) abrinsky bought me yet.