Synopses & Reviews
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 Banks, meanwhile already haunted and withdrawn after nearly dying in the fire that destroyed his home has gone missing just when he's needed most, and has left plenty of questions behind.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.
Review
"Below Robinson's high average...though he's always worth reading." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"After a break with a standalone novel (The First Cut), Robinson returns to a police procedural series that just keeps getting better. Recommended." Library Journal
Review
"Remarkable." Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Synopsis
Murder cuts close to home in this powerful new tale of suspense from "a gifted creator" (Boston Globe) one of the best and most original talents writing today.
Synopsis
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.
About the Author
Peter Robinson's award-winning novels have been named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly, a Notable Book by the New York Times, and a Page Turner of the Week by People magazine. Robinson was born and brought up in Yorkshire, England, but has lived in North America for nearly twenty-five years.