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Strange Affair (Inspector Banks series Book 15) Kindle Edition
LOUISE PENNY calls Peter Robinson's new novel In the Dark Places a "thrilling, brilliantly plotted, beautifully paced" read. Available August 11, 2015—preorder your copy today!
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherWilliam Morrow
- Publication dateOctober 13, 2009
- File size699 KB
-
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Meanwhile, back in Eastvale, Banks's colleague and ex-lover, Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot, probes the shooting death of Jennifer Clewes, a 27-year-old family planning center administrator from London who's been found in her car, with the address of Banks's once-ruined (and recently broken into) cottage tucked into her jeans pocket. As Annie seeks to identify Clewes's attacker and determine whether this crime fits a pattern of roadway assaults, she's anxious also to discover what connection Banks may have to the case. But the DCI is frustratingly nowhere to be found.
Like 2003's Close to Home, Strange Affair adds some welcome bricks to Banks's back story, this time forcing him to reappraise a brother whom he had long resented and distrusted. Simultaneously, Robinson's latest police procedural delivers artfully contrived, intersecting story lines charged with rumors of international arms dealing, hints of misdeeds at a women's clinic, secondary players so shady they might be invisible after sundown, and insights into just how far Banks's career has distanced him from folks less steeped in the ugly side of mankind. An immensely satisfying mystery, filled with professional risks and personal regrets, this is truly an Affair to remember. --J. Kingston Pierce
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Bookmarks Magazine
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
From Booklist
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
From the Back Cover
On a warm summer night, an attractive woman hurtles north in a blue Peugeot with a hastily scrawled address in her pocket, while, back in London, a desperate man leaves an urgent late-night phone message on his brother's answering machine. By sunrise the next morning, the woman is found inside her car along an otherwise peaceful country lane, shot, execution-style, through the head.
Welcome to the idyllic Yorkshire Dales, where Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot arrives on the scene and discovers, to her surprise, a slip of paper in the dead woman's pocket that bears the name of her colleague and erstwhile lover, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks. Banks, meanwhile -- already haunted and withdrawn after nearly dying in the fire that destroyed his home -- has gone missing just when he's needed most, and has left plenty of questions behind.
As Annie struggles to determine whether or not Banks is safe -- and what role he may have played in the woman's murder -- Banks himself investigates the mysterious disappearance of his estranged brother, Roy, whose late-night call for help brings Banks back to London. Working from Roy's swank apartment, Banks makes the rounds to Roy's old haunts and slowly inhabits the life of his younger brother -- the black sheep of the family, who always seemed to sail a little too close to the wind. As the trail of clues about Roy's life and associations draws Banks into a dark circle of conspiracy and corruption, mobsters and murder, Banks suddenly realizes he's running out of time to save Roy, and by digging too deep, he may be exposing himself and his family to the same -- possibly deadly -- danger.
About the Author
Ron Keith, a native of England, graduated from the University of Manchester. He has appeared in the Broadway touring production of Amadeus, in off-Broadway productions such as Hedda Gabler, My Fair Lady, and Candida, and in many regional stage productions. His television appearances include roles in One Life to Live and As the World Turns.
Peter Robinson, author of the award-winning Inspector Banks novels, has won the Anthony, Barry, Macavity, Martin Beck, and Arthur Ellis awards, among others. The Inspector Banks novels have been named a Publishers's Weekly Best Book of the Year, a New York Times Notable Book, and a People magazine Page Turner of the Week. His novels have reached #1 on the London Sunday Times bestsellers list and hit the New York Times expanded list of bestsellers.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Strange Affair
A Novel of SuspenseBy Robinson, PeterWilliam Morrow & Company
ISBN: 0060544333Chapter One
Was she being followed? It was hard to tell at that time of night on the motorway. There was plenty of traffic, lorries for the most part, and people driving home from the pub just a little too carefully, red BMWs coasting up the fast lane, doing a hundred or more, businessmen in a hurry to get home from late meetings. She was beyond Newport Pagnell now, and the muggy night air blurred the red tail lights of the cars ahead and the oncoming headlights across the road. She began to feel nervous as she checked her rear-view mirror and saw that the car was still behind her.
She pulled over to the outside lane and slowed down. The car, a dark Mondeo, overtook her. It was too dark to glimpse faces, but she thought there was just one person in the front and another in the back. It didn't have a taxi light on top, so she guessed it was probably a private hire car and stopped worrying. Some rich git being ferried to a nightclub in Leeds, most likely.
She overtook the Mondeo a little further up the motorway and didn't give it a second glance. The late night radio was playing Old Blue Eyes singing "Summer Wind". Her kind of music, no matter how old fashioned people told her it was. Talent and good music never went out of style as far as she was concerned.
When she got to Watford Gap services, she realized she felt tired and hungry, and she still had a long way to go, so she decided to stop for a short break. She didn't even notice the Mondeo pull in two cars behind her.
A few seedy looking people hung around the entrance; a couple of kids who didn't look old enough to drive stood smoking and playing the machines, giving her the eye as she walked past, staring at her breasts.
She went first to the ladies, then to the cafe, where she bought a ham and tomato sandwich and sat alone to eat, washing it down with a Diet Coke. At the table opposite, a man with a long face and dandruff on the collar of his dark suit jacket gave her the eye over the top of his glasses, pretending to read his newspaper and eat a sausage roll.
Was he just a common-or-garden variety perv, or was there something more sinister in his interest? she wondered. In the end, she decided he was just a perv. Sometimes it seemed as if the world was full of them, that she could hardly walk down the street or go for a drink on her own without some sad pillock who thought he was God's gift eyeing her up, like the kids hanging around the entrance, or coming over and laying a line of chat on her. Still, she told herself, what else could you expect at this time of the night in a motorway service station? A couple of other men came in and went to the counter for coffee-to-go, but they didn't give her a second glance.
She finished half the sandwich, dumped the rest and got her travel mug filled with coffee. When she walked back to her car she made sure that there were people around -- a family with two young kids up way up past their bedtime, noisy and hyperactive -- and that no-one was following her.
The tank was only a quarter full, so she filled it up at the petrol station, using her credit card right there, at the pump. The perv from the cafe pulled up at the pump opposite and stared at her as he put the nozzle in the tank. She ignored him. She could see the night manager in his office, watching through the window, and that made her feel more secure.
Tank full, she turned down the slip road and eased in between two articulated lorries. It was hot in the car, so she opened both windows and enjoyed the play of breeze they created. It helped keep her awake, along with the hot black coffee. The clock on the dashboard read 12:35 am. Only about two or three hours to go, then she would safe ...
Continues...Excerpted from Strange Affairby Robinson, Peter Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
From AudioFile
Product details
- ASIN : B000FCJZ2C
- Publisher : William Morrow (October 13, 2009)
- Publication date : October 13, 2009
- Language : English
- File size : 699 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 384 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #171,362 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #414 in Read & Listen for $14.99 or Less
- #845 in Read & Listen for Less
- #1,521 in Traditional Detective Mysteries (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Peter Robinson's DCI Banks became a major ITV1 drama starring Stephen Tompkinson as Inspector Banks and Andrea Lowe as DI Annie Cabbot.
Peter's standalone novel BEFORE THE POISON won the IMBA's 2013 Dilys Award as well as the 2012 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel by the Crime Writers of Canada. This was Peter's sixth Arthur Ellis award. His critically acclaimed DCI Banks novels have won numerous awards in Britain, the United States, Canada and Europe, and are published in translation all over the world. In 2020 Peter was made a Grand Master by the Crime Writers of Canada. Peter grew up in Yorkshire, and divided his time between Richmond, UK, and Canada until his death in 2022.
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We start with a murder in Yorkshire that is investigated using standard police methods by Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot. Simultaneously, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks is roused from his depressive convalescence by an uncharacteristic cry for help from his estranged brother. Banks soon is on the trail of a missing person whose life, we come to see, is intertwined with that of the murder victim. The mystery aspects of this book are developed exceptionally well, and the quality of this novel is enhanced by the attention the author pays to the psychological aspects of his characters and their interrelationships. That said, the book does suffer from the author's attempts throughout to deal with the sequela of the previous book in the Banks series. If you haven't read the books in order (as I did not), then you're probably getting more information about the Cabbot/Banks relationship than you really need or want for purposes of appreciating this story. If you are a series reader, then this soap-opera-like reinforcement is probably welcome. I could have done without.
Alan Banks is a worthy member of a proud fraternity of British police detectives, and those who especially enjoy this sub-genre will not be disappointed by this book.
Congratulations to an author who has a believable everyman hero and yet an author who writes beautiful descriptions of the good, the bad and the frightening.
I am still quite a few volumes away from Robinson's most recent publications and I look forward to every book up until and including the most recent one. I have purchased (some in print, some in Kindle versions) as many as I can find and they sit in order....waiting.
Mystery Fan
So happy I re-discovered this book and delved into Inspector Alan Banks. Now I'm on a tear to catch up on every book.
This book, deep into the series, was still a good starting place. Enough back story was provided to make me feel like I hit the ground running with these characters.
The people are full fleshed out, no missing parts and no generalities. Each one of them brings something special to the party. In this case, it happens to be family dynamics at play. Nothing is more complex than that. I loved following the search for his brother's killer and the entire unfolding of that story. What a page turner.
Any mystery fan--especially a fan of British police stories--should enjoy Inspector Banks. (Spoken from an American point of view!)