Peter Robinson. Blood at the Root (1998) A white supremacist dies in a back alley, kicked to death. The first indications are that three South East Asians are responsible; their arrest causes accusations of racial profiling etc. Things go from bad to worse. Banks’s marriage is falling apart; Sandra has recognised that they no longer have anything in common. Chief Constable Riddle hates Banks, and gleefully uses whatever he can to ride Banks, and finally takes him off the case. DC Gates is used by a fellow officer to get info on Banks and pass it on to Riddle. The case spills over into international drug trading, and covers the neighbouring patch as well as Banks’s. It’s the help he gets from an old colleague there that finally breaks the case, but there are enough dangling story lines that we will want to read the next instalment.
Well done entertainment. The solution fits the clues, but the plotting is not as careful as in the other Banks novels I’ve read. Characterisation and ambience as well done as ever. **½
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