Peter Robinson. The Summer That Never Was (2003)

     Peter Robinson. The Summer That Never Was (2003) A late Inspector Banks, after his divorce from Sandra and an affair with Anne. The bones of a childhood friend of Banks restart the investigation; Banks offers what little information he has, and ends up helping the young female DI. Meanwhile, a boy of similar age goes missing, and Anne and Banks handle that case. It’s murder of course, but not an intentional one. Banks muses that both boys were failed by the adults in their lives; Robinson didn’t need to point that moral except as further evidence that Banks is not your ordinary cop. The attraction of these books is the ambience and the characters. Robinson writes novels about crime, not crime novels. I like them. This one’s as good as the first one I read, A Necessary End. **½