The Inspector Banks
23 primary works • 39 total works
Book 25
The twenty-fifth instalment of the Number One Bestselling DCI Banks series
'Robinson remains the master of the police procedural.' Mail on Sunday
'Robinson is prolific, but with each book he manages to ring the changes.' Guardian
*****
A young local student has apparently committed suicide. Her body is found in an abandoned car on a lonely country road. She didn't own a car. Didn't even drive. How did she get there? Where did she die? Who moved her, and why?
Meanwhile a man in his sixties is found dead in a gully up on the wild moorland. He is wearing an expensive suit and carrying no identification. Post-mortem findings indicate he died from injuries sustained during the fall. But what was he doing up there? And why are there no signs of a car in the vicinity?
As the inconsistencies multiply and the mysteries proliferate, Annie's father's new partner, Zelda, comes up with a shocking piece of information that alerts Banks and Annie to the return of an old enemy in a new guise.
This is someone who will stop at nothing, not even murder, to get what he wants - and suddenly the stakes are raised and the hunt is on.
Book 26
The 26th instalment of the Number One bestselling series
'The master of the police procedural' Mail on Sunday
'The Alan Banks mystery-suspense novels are the best series on the market. Try one and tell me I'm wrong' Stephen King
***
A skinny young boy is found dead - his body carelessly stuffed into wheelie bin.
Detective Superintendent Alan Banks and his team are called to investigate. Who is the boy, and where did he come from? Was he discarded as rubbish, or left as a warning to someone? He looks Middle Eastern, but no one on the East Side Estate has seen him before.
As the local press seize upon an illegal immigrant angle, and the national media the story of another stabbing, the police are called to investigate a less newsworthy death: a middle-aged heroin addict found dead of an overdose in another estate, scheduled for redevelopment.
Banks finds the threads of each case seem to be connected to the other, and to the dark side of organised crime in Eastvale. Does another thread link to his friend Zelda, who is facing her own dark side?
The truth may be more complex - or much simpler - than it seems . . .
Book 27
'The Alan Banks mystery-suspense novels are the best series on the market. Try one and tell me I'm wrong' Stephen King
***THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER***
Murder is only the beginning for Banks and his team . . .
The gruesome double murder at an Eastvale property developer's luxury home should be an open and shut case for Superintendent Banks and his team of detectives. There's a clear link to the notoriously vicious Albanian mafia, men who left the country suspiciously soon after the death. Then they find a cache of spy-cam videos hidden in the house - and Annie and Gerry's investigation pivots to the rape of a young girl that could cast the murders in an entirely different light.
Banks's friend Zelda, increasingly uncertain of her future in Britain's hostile environment, thinks she will be safer in Moldova hunting the men who abducted, raped and enslaved her than she is Yorkshire or London. Her search takes her back to the orphanage where it all began - but by stirring up the murky waters of the past, Zelda is putting herself in greater danger than any she's seen before.
And as the threat escalates, so does the danger for Banks and those who love Zelda . . .
'The master of the police procedural' Mail on Sunday
'A writer at the very height of his powers' – Ian Rankin
Playing With Fire is the fourteenth novel in Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks series, following on from The Summer That Never Was.
In the early hours of a cold January morning, two narrowboats catch fire on a dead-end stretch of the Eastvale canal. When signs of accelerant are found at the scene, DCI Banks and DI Annie Cabbot are summoned. But by the time they arrive, only the smouldering wreckage is left, and human remains have been found on both boats.
The evidence points towards a deliberate attack. But who was the intended victim? Was it Tina, the sixteen-year-old who had been living a drug-fuelled existence with her boyfriend? Or was it Tom, the mysterious, lonely artist?
As Banks makes his enquiries, it appears that a number of people are acting suspiciously: the interfering 'lock-keeper', Tina's cold-hearted stepfather, the wily local art dealer, even Tina's boyfriend . . .
Then the arsonist strikes again, and Banks's powers of investigation are tested to the limit . . .
The Inspector Banks books became the major British ITV drama DCI Banks. Continue the series with Strange Affair.
With his personal life in turmoil DCI Banks is considering his options. But then late one night the architect of his professional misfortune, Chief Constable Riddle, summons Banks to his house for his daughter Emily has run away and compromising photos have appeared online. Riddle wants Banks to use his unorthodox methods to find her without a fuss.
Banks, a father himself, cannot refuse and he follows the trail to the dark heart of London. But when a series of gruesome murders follows soon after, Banks finds himself pulled into the dangerous world of his most powerful enemy, Chief Constable Jimmy Riddle.
Cold is the Grave is a pulse-pounding tale. If you enjoyed it, then you'll love the next instalment in the Banks series - which was made into the major British ITV Drama DCI Banks - Aftermath.
*****
Critical acclaim for the Inspector Banks series
'A powerfully moving work' Ian Rankin
'Top-notch police procedure' Jeffery Deaver
'A wonderful novel' Michael Connelly
'An addictive crime-novel series' New York Times
'A guaranteed page-turner' Mirror
'Demonstrates how the crime novel, when done right, can reach parts that other books can't . . . A considerable achievement' Guardian
'One of the most authentic and atmospheric of crime series' Independent
'The master of police procedural' Mail on Sunday
'Near, perhaps, even at the top of, the British crime writers' league' The Times
'Banks is genuinely human, rather than a hard man' Observer
A disgraced college lecturer is found murdered with 5,000 pounds in his pocket on a disused railway line near his home. Since being dismissed from his job for sexual misconduct four years previously, he has been living a poverty-stricken and hermit-like existence in this isolated spot.
The suspects range from several individuals at the college where he used to teach to a woman who knew the victim back in the early '70s at Essex University, then a hotbed of political activism. When Banks receives a warning to step away from the case, he realises there is much more to the mystery than meets the eye - for there are plenty more skeletons to come out of the closet . . .
35 The Hill is an ordinary house in an ordinary street, owned by an apparently ordinary young couple. But it is about to become infamous . . .When police constables Janet Taylor and Dennis Morrisey are sent to the house following a report of a domestic disturbance, they stumble upon a truly horrific scene. A scene which leaves one dead and the other fighting for her life and career. Inspector Alan Banks, currently Acting Superintendent, has been leading the hunt for the Chameleon, a serial killer who has so far abducted five young women in the Yorkshire area. Banks is immediately called to The Hill - where, it seems, the Chameleon's identity has finally and gruesomely been revealed.But the capture of the serial killer is only the beginning of a shocking investigation that will test everyone to the absolute limit . . .
'A writer at the very height of his powers.' IAN RANKIN
'What raises Robinson's series out of the routine is the thoughtfulness of the writing, the subtlety of the characterisation and the skill of the plotting.' OBSERVER
During a blistering summer, drought has depleted Thornfield Reservoir, uncovering the remains of a small village called Hobb's End - hidden from view for over 40 years. For a curious young boy this resurfaced hamlet has become a magical playground . . . until he unearths a human skeleton. Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks is given the impossible task of identifying the victim - a woman who lived in a place that no longer exists, whose former residents are scattered to the winds. Anyone else might throw in the towel but Banks sets out to uncover the murky past buried beneath a flood of time...
'A WONDERFUL NOVEL' Michael Connelly
It was 2.47am when Chief Inspector Alan Banks arrived at the barn and saw the body of Keith Rothwell for the first time. Only hours earlier two masked men had walked the mild-mannered accountant out of his farmhouse and clinically blasted him with a shotgun.
Clearly this is a professional hit - but Keith was hardly the sort of person to make deadly enemies. Or was he? For the police investigation soon raises more questions than answers. And who, exactly, is Robert Calvert?
The more Banks scratches the surface, the more he wonders what lies beneath the veneer of the apparently happy Rothwell family. And when his old sparring partner Detective Superintendent Richard Burgess arrives from Scotland Yard, the case takes yet another unexpected twist...
`The novels of Peter Robinson are chilling, evocative, deeply nuanced works of art.' Dennis Lehane
`Peter Robinson's cast of characters is vividly drawn. Well written... highly entertaining.' Scotland on Sunday
