Strange Affair: A Novel of Suspense (Inspector Banks Mysteries)

Strange Affair: A Novel of Suspense (Inspector Banks Mysteries)

Chief Inspector Alan Banks faces his most personal case from New York Times bestselling author Peter Robinson. A bullet to the brain abruptly halted a terrified young woman's desperate flight. In her pocket is the name of a policeman whose own life was brutally invaded, mercilessly shaken, and very nearly erased—a policeman who has since gone missing. The dead woman in the car had been running from something—but she didn't run far or fast enough. Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot would like to question the man the victim was apparently racing to meet: Annie's superior—and former lover—Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks. But Banks has vanished into the anonymous chaos of the city, drawn into a mad whirl of greed, inhumanity, and death, by a frantic phone call from the brother he no longer knows. Banks is unaware that the threads connecting a sinister kidnapping with a savage slaying are as thick as rope . . . and long enough for a haunted and broken rogue cop to hang himself. One of his most, clever, twisting thrillers, Strange Affair attests once again why readers love and can’t get enough of Peter Robinson’s novels of suspense.   Without a doubt, the family and friends of fictional sleuths are two of the most endangered species on the planet. Crime novelists seem to have no qualms about sacrificing the people nearest and dearest to their protagonists, if doing so will advance plot development or bestow emotional depth upon their series stars. Peter Robinson continues this ruthless tradition in Strange Affair , his tension-packed 15th novel featuring headstrong British Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks. Still on the mend after the blazing finale of 2004's Playing with Fire , temporarily sworn off whiskey but back to smoking, Banks is interrupted in the midst of brooding over his life and failed relationships by a message from his estranged younger brother, Roy, who says he needs the DCI's help in "a matter of life and death." Concerned, especially since Roy boasts a history of dubious business dealings, Banks leaves Yorkshire for his sibling's home in London, only to find that residence unlocked, Roy's computer missing, and his cell phone left behind. After learning that Roy was last seen stepping into a car with an unidentified man, and receiving on Roy's mobile what appears to be a photo of his only brother slumped over in a chair, the cop fears that a kidnapping has occurred. 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 Banks will ferret out the truth, no matter what rules he breaks. In this British police procedural, Robinson offers up a gritty plot with some introspective ruminations on self-identity and personal relationships. As Banks (“not your everyday quaffing plonk”) evaluates his relationship with his high-living, shady brother, he examines his own vulnerabilities-heightened, of course, by his nasty divorce and near-death experience in the aforementioned fire. Robinson fleshes out compelling characters, but also comments on important social issues, from international arms dealings to women’s rights. It’s a good read, especially for its unpredictable depravities. “Alan has long known that there is no shortage of monsters in this world,” writes the South Florida Sun-Sentinel , “but Strange Affair reinforces that.” Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. Robinson is one of those multiawarded authors (the Edgar, the Anthony, the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere), who is absolutely reliable. This novel marks the fifteenth in the Inspector Alan Banks series, set in Yorkshire. Depressed over the loss of his cottage in a fire, Banks is galvanized into action by a pleading message from his estranged brother in London. When Banks travels to his wealthy brother's h