Friday, May 07, 2021

Two for the Price of One: Robinson's Piece of My Heart

 Peter Robinson. Piece of My Heart (2006) Two linked crimes, separated by forty years. A rock band that figures in both. Two cops, Inspector Chadwick, the damaged army vet who investigates the first one, and DCI Alan Banks, who investigates the second one and establishes the links. Justice of a sort is achieved, but moral and legal guilt and innocence are not the same. Banks and Annie continue their adjustment to each other as friends and colleagues. A new, careerist Superintendent causes grief. Family dysfunction slows and complicates both investigations. Robinson plots and writes competently, as usual, with fewer of the puppet strings visible. Still, he could have done with a sterner editor, who would have pruned the lists of pop-music trivia. Or maybe not. **½

 

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Travels Across Canada: Stuart McLean's Welcome Home (1992)

Stuart McLean. Welcome Home. (1992) McLean took a few trips across the country, and stayed in several small towns. Then he wrote this elegy...