Weer een mooi boek van Peter Robinson, zijn inspecteur, Banks, komt steeds meer en meer tot leven. Ik vind het leuk om de hoofdpersonages zo mooi uitgewerkt te zien. Je gaat doorheen alle boeken, meer en meer meeleven met de inspecteur, geeft voor mij een extra dimensie aan de reeks.

In dit boek is de inspecteur op een zijspoor gezet, zijn vrouw heeft hem verlaten, hij is verhuisd en moet opnieuw beginnen. Algauw is de zaak waar hij op gezet wordt, zijn redding. Het klikt met de agente waar hij moet mee samenwerken en er ontstaat een aantrekkingskracht en een relatie.

Banks wordt doorheen het boek emotioneel door elkaar geschut en mijmert regelmatig over het verleden. Dit draagt allemaal bij tot de menselijkheid van het personage.

Het verhaal zelf : er wordt een lijk gevonden in een vallei die jaren onder water heeft gestaan. Ze is meer dan 50 jaren geleden vermoord. Banks wordt op de zaak gezet.
Door de verhaalstijl waarbij de schoonzus van het slachtoffer haar verhaal doet wordt het een levensechte beschrijving van het slachtoffer. Het geeft een mooie afwisseling tussen heden en verleden en maakt dat je het boek moeilijk kan wegleggen.

Ik vond het een prachtig boek en tot nu toe een van de betere uit de serie rond inspecteur Banks.

When a summer drought depletes a reservoir & uncovers a small village, a human skeleton is discovered amidst the ruins.
Peter Robinson's 10th DCI Banks novel gives us two stories, set sixty years apart. Each is meticulously plotted & as well thought out as you would expect from this ever improving author. What lifts this crime story (& much of Robinson's work) above others in the genre is the superb characterisation. When reading most crime novels I find that the character's home lives & life away from the investigation itself to be dull, plodding & pointless. However, with Robinson these scenes add to the story rather than detract from it.
Yet another strong entry in the DCI Banks series.

One of the earlier Inspector Banks stories, where he first meets Annie.
Pay attention, because the sections alternate between three viewpoints. We have Banks story, working to solve a murder committed during WWII. There is the one set in Hobb's End, during the war. Plus the one that had me confused as to how it fit in, that of the popular mystery writer Vivian Elmsley. They all come together of course.

The solution to the murder wasn't necessarily surprising, but there are solutions to other things that were. Quite a good story!

I am a stickler for, and get stuck on, if I don't "get," time periods. Here we have the mid 1940s, during WWII, then the current day Banks lives in. Published in 1999, but the setting is earlier, late 80s like the first in the series. So, why does Vivian Elmsley "look back on that evening..." as "over twenty-five years ago"? Well, it WAS "over" twenty-five years, but much over! Other references talk about 40 years.

Such a tiny thing to stick in my brain! Other than that, I enjoyed the novel very much. I should probably read them in order though, I already know some things about Annie from later books.

This is my first book in this detective series but it works great as a stand alone novel also. Enjoyed the plot and the intertwining between past and present. Looking forward to reading more novels in this series.

Excellent plot, great writing and a good series to be explored.

4* In a Dry Season (Inspector Banks, #10)
TR Gallows View (Inspector Banks, #1)
TR A Dedicated Man (Inspector Banks, #2)
TR A Necessary End (Inspector Banks, #3)
TR The Hanging Valley (Inspector Banks, #4)
TR Past Reason Hated (Inspector Banks, #5)
TR Wednesday's Child (Inspector Banks, #6)
TR Dry Bones that Dream (Inspector Banks, #7)
TR Innocent Graves (Inspector Banks, #8)
TR Blood at the Root (Inspector Banks, #9)
TR Cold is the Grave (Inspector Banks, #11)
TR Aftermath (Inspector Banks, #12)
TR Close to Home (Inspector Banks, #13)
TR Playing With Fire (Inspector Banks, #14)
TR Strange Affair (Inspector Banks, #15)
TR Piece of My Heart (Inspector Banks, #16)
TR Friend of the Devil (Inspector Banks, #17)
TR All the Colours of Darkness (Inspector Banks, #18)
TR Bad Boy (Inspector Banks, #19)
TR Watching the Dark (Inspector Banks, #20)
TR Children of the Revolution (Inspector Banks, #21)
TR Abattoir Blues (Inspector Banks, #22)
TR When the Music's Over (Inspector Banks, #23)
TR Sleeping in the Ground (Inspector Banks, #24)
TR Careless Love (Inspector Banks, #25)

This was book I really enjoyed. You get 2 perspectives, current time frame with a cold case murder & the past time frame which is WW2. Amazing development of characters by the author.

Sometimes only a good British police procedural will do!

This is such a great series!! I haven't made up my mind as to how I feel about the way the author ends his books (he just kind of stops in the middle of a scene) but I really like Banks.

In the aftermath of punching Chief Superintendent Riddle and after his wife left him at the same time, Banks has been in a wilderness. He’s still at work because Riddle doesn’t want to bear close scrutiny for his own actions but he can make sure Banks spends his days tied to his desk working his way through piles of boring paperwork. At home, Banks crawled into a bottle and pulled his self pity and depression around his like a duvet for a time but he’s now trying to make a new life for himself. The semi in Eastvale is sold and he’s bought a small cottage on the edge of the village of Gratley. Doing it up is giving him something to do in his spare time.

Then one day his telephone rings. It’s Riddle and he’s got a cold case for Banks. The drought has uncovered the village of Hobb’s End which had last seen the daylight in the 1950’s before the creation of a reservoir at the site. A boy, playing in the deserted buildings, fell and found a skeleton. Riddle wants Banks to see if there is a case to answer. He’s to work with local DS Cabbot. Whilst it may not be urgent, after all it may not even be a murder, at least it’s out of the office. When he meets DS Cabbot, he’s even happier. DS Annie Cabbot is a self possessed, obviously intelligent woman in her late twenties and Banks is surprised by an instant attraction. What is Riddle up to? This is starting to look too good to be true.

But it is a murder, confirmed by a rather creepy archaeologist and the pathologist. The victim is a young woman and she’d given birth to at least one child. Her death was violent: strangulation followed by vicious and numerous stab wounds. I found the description of how the clues about the body could be built up really interesting. Anyway, Banks and Cabbot start the painstaking slog of trying to identify the victim and who the murderer might be. They use parish records and parish magazines, they interview the only two people they can find still alive, they even look at paintings done by a local artist. They work out that the victim was a young land army woman called Gloria Singleton. She’d married local boy Matthew Shackleton whilst at Hobb’s End just before Matthew had gone off to war. Before Gwen saw him again, a telegram arrived to to say Matthew was missing in Burma. They also discover that there was an American base located close by and that Gwen went around with a few of the soldiers, often accompanied by her sister in law Gwen Shackleton.

Interspersed with sections moving the investigation forward with Banks and Cabbot, we hear from Gwen Shackleton. We learn how she first meets the newly arrived Gloria; how they become friends; how Matthew and Gloria fall in love and marry; how the American soldiers became important to both of them; what happened to Matthew. We learn what Gwen did and why she did it. Then there’s a tremendous twist to the plot. The ending to In a dry season is very different to the other books and very interesting.

This I picked up on impulse because I still had $3 on my book budget from a used-bookstore trip with my Dad at Christmas (parents, this is a great way to thrill your book-loving children: Give them $20 and set them loose in a used bookstore. Works just as well at 30 as at 10). Needless to say, I hadn't read any of the other Banks books or anything else by Robinson.

Initial impressions:

Golly, but Western culture has deep, deep confusion about sex and love.

The writing is fine in most places but veers into...cliché? Superficialities? when getting into the inner thoughts of Banks and Annie. It's a little jarring, and I can't tell whether it's because they are emotionally unaware as characters or because Robinson is less good with the inner thoughts of people. The other thing that was jarring was how Robinson feels the need to tell you what almost every single person in the book is wearing. It got old.

The whole thing left me sad for the characters. All of them. There is no one in this whole book who isn't deeply hurt in some way and doing their best with what they've been dealt.

There were places I could see the clues being placed down for the future (this does not usually happen for me in detective fiction; I'm usually fairly easy to surprise, lol) and places I was like WUT! (That last page, though.) The mix between seeing the beams and girders of the book, so to speak, and the surprising moments was an odd experience.

Over all, fairly well done.

This is a great read - 4,5 even - my friend was correct when she said that the UK detective series are superior to FBI stories. Banks and Cabbot are strong characters, playing off each other. I usually don’t enjoy books where there are present and past stories, but it is very well done. And I defy anyone who can guess the true killer! Well done!

Amazing book. This series is flat wonderful and the characters feel like you know them. One of my favorite authors. Highly recommend!