My house is finally getting into the Christmas spirit and I am getting there myself as well. Only a week or so to go until the big Ho Ho Ho. The new job has been going well and the second week was considerably less tiring than the first. Also, I have been getting back into the routine of reading in bed again. Get in there early, get reading and relax that brain!
#### SPOILER ALERT ####
Cold is the Grave - Peter Robinson
This was my second encounter with Mr Banks and it was another pleasant one.
This is one of those stories that starts out with two seemingly unrelated events and in the end it turns that investigating case 1 helps out case 2. You have (partly) the same group of people involved in both cases which makes for a conveniently tight group of characters and suspects. There are a few more developed characters around which makes reading he stories a bit more interesting, some of them are recurring so it is nice to meet them again.
At the start of our adventure Banks is called upon to do a favour for his Chief Constable (Riddle). A case of his young daughter Emily/Louisa gone a bit wild and trundled off to the big city and could Banks please see if she is okay. He would do it himself but he has his career to think about you see. It seems simple enough and Banks grudgingly agrees to look into it. The girl is suitably not please to see him or to hear that her family are concerned about her. Her boyfriend is suitably obviously bad news and her friends from London are both suitably weird and slightly suspicious. In the end it all seems to work out well and Banks get her home safe and sound so he can get back to his day job of finding out who murdered a local security guard.
Then she turns up dead in a nightclub and the brown stuff starts hitting the fan. The list of suspects is not too long but the fact that the parents hide information from Banks does not help the case. Nor does the fact that he is supposed to be investigating this other random murder f a night guard who went for an involuntary "long ride". Thankfully he has his crack team and Annie to help him (yes, she is back... no, I still do not know why we need her as a love interest!). They way that the story develops is actually quite satisfying and I kind of enjoyed the contrast between the two murders Banks was investigating he is having to shift between two cases and you feel the tension that it brings with it. In a way the two murders Banks is investigating are linked and in a way they are not. The girl was involved with some bad people who happen to be involved with the other murder. In a way, looking into who might have murdered her helps the investigation into the other case... and vice versa. Emily was not involved in the copying of illegal CDs but someone she knew was. Also, it seems that killing someone by adding a lot of strychnine to coke is the mark of a different kind of animal than one that is interested only in making money. Once Banks gets the motive clear of the murder of the guard he realises he needs to find a new suspect for the girl's murder.
I have to say that I kind of figured out who the murderer was in Emily's case. As soon as Emily's mum mentioned a daughter she gave up for adoption and we found out who her father was it was not that big a stretch to put two and two together. Maybe I am finally getting better at this detective story business? Nonetheless, the final reveal in the interview room though is very powerful and slightly harrowing and you get a really good insight into what moved the murderer to act in the way they did. It is a chilling tale of a sociopath who feels everything bad in her life was all down to this young girl and she had to pay with her life. One of the saddest things in the book is that things do not end well for Mr Riddle, the dad. He decides that a date with a hose at the end of an exhaust pipe is to be preferred over a good talk over a glass of whiskey... shame. Not sure if it is the scandal over his daughter's antics or the loss of his political career that drove him to it but it leaves his wife and young son to pick up the pieces and carry on. This is another strength of the book. You not only see get to see the murder, you also get to see some of the fall out in the family. This makes sure you are more involved and invested in wanting to get justice for Emily.
Good story, well structured. Liked the fact Banks went to Stony Stratford which is just down the road from me, still amazed how a guy can be that good a detective and then not see that his marriage is sooooo over and still not sure it needs the Annie love interest angle but hey... I am willing to give him another book to prove me wrong.
Title: Cold is the Grave
Author: Peter Robinson
455 pages
Pan Books
ISBN# 0-330-48216-5
Books to be read: 143
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