Peter Robinson. Aftermath (2001) Banks is leading a joint task force trying to find a serial killer. It wears him out. The case is solved, but its effects spread like a stain through the community, among the police, among the families and neighbours of the victims, in the community at large. But the killings had their origin in horrific abuse within two related families many years earlier. The title is thematic.
The backstory proceeds: Sandra is pregnant with her lover’s child and wants Banks to finally get on with the divorce. Annie Cabot decides that their affair should stop, but wants a continued collegial connection. Banks needs a holiday: that’s where The Summer that Never Was begins.
Another good read by Robinson, but I felt somewhat detached from the story, perhaps because the plot was too obviously constructed to demonstrate the unknowns about serial killing. There was also a touch too much gore. **½
The Summer that Never Was (2003) Banks is on leave enjoying a holiday in Greece after his leadership of a serial killer case left him exhausted. Reading the week-old English morning paper, he notices a story that revives a cold case: one of his childhood friends disappeared twenty-some years ago, and now his body has been discovered. Banks decides to offer what he recalls of that time, but also (of course) hangs around the investigation’s periphery, and uncovers not only evidence that he didn’t really know the boy, but also of corrupt social and political leaders and bent cops.
Another well-done police procedural. Robinson is good at creating the ambience of long stretches of more or less futile lines of inquiry that eventually sift the essential information from the confusing detritus. Banks is left with the satisfaction of a case solved, and the loss of misleading memories of childhood innocence. The writing is merely workmanlike for too much of the book, but Banks and the other characters stick with you. ***
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