When the Music's Over

June 27, 2016
In Edgar-winner Robinson’s timely, sobering 23rd Inspector Banks novel (after 2015’s In the Dark Places), Det. Insp. Annie Cabbot investigates the rape and murder of 15-year-old Mimosa “Mimsy” Moffat, a white girl found naked on a country road, who lived in the nearby estates in Wytherton, York, and ran with a crowd that included several older guys of Pakistani descent. While Cabbot must tread carefully in the racially charged atmosphere during her investigation, Banks, recently promoted to detective superintendent, looks into claims made against a beloved British variety star, Danny Caxton, a 1960s-era crooner known for the catchphrase “Do your own thing,” which seemed to include raping 14-year-old Linda Palmer in 1967. Banks must decide whether Palmer, a poet who now wants to pursue a case against Caxton, is credible, and whether she’s his only victim. Robinson takes hot-button topics—xenophobia, sexual assault, and celebrities—and turns them into uniquely compelling cases for Banks, who remains a stalwart of justice in crime fiction. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary Agency.

June 1, 2016

The 23rd Alan Banks mystery (after In the Dark Places) opens with a naked girl thrown out of a van on a dark country road. DI Annie Cabbot and recently promoted Detective Superintendent Banks pursue separate but related cases, linked by the sexual exploitation of teen girls. Cabbot works the rape and murder case of the 15-year-old girl ejected from the van, a case possibly connected to the heinous practice of grooming girls for prostitution and complicated by cultural differences with the Asian community. Banks's investigation involves historical abuse. Well-known poet Linda Palmer was raped in 1967 at age 14 by popular British celebrity Danny Caxton. As the evidence piles up and more crimes surface the teams race to solve their cases. Happily, the resolution includes the hint of a new age-appropriate love interest for Banks. VERDICT Somehow, Banks and company never lose their appeal for fans of gritty British crime novels, especially those featuring a music-loving detective who is always in trouble and rarely lucky in love. Series followers won't be disappointed. [See Prepub Alert, 2/29/16.]--Barbara Clark-Greene, Groton P.L., CT

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2016

In a case that hits close to home, newly promoted Detective Superintendent Alan Banks investigates a poet's claim that a nationally prominent individual once assaulted her, while Detective Inspector Annie Banks struggles with a mystery about a girl found battered and lifeless by a distant roadside. The "Inspector Banks" series has sold more than a million copies in this country alone, and with sales rising last year by a third over the previous year, it's safe to say there will be demand. With a 75,000 copy first printing.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2016
Alan Banks' first case as detective superintendent is a 50-year-old sex crime that's echoed by an equally appalling assault in present-day Eastvale."Do your own thing!" was Danny Caxton's catchphrase back when he was a pop singer. But a more accurate trademark might have been the one dropped by his ex-wife, Carol Canning: "When the music's over, it's time to have some fun." Encouraged by some recent high-visibility prosecutions of celebrities for ancient sex crimes, poet Linda Palmer has accused Caxton and a friend he summoned to his Blackpool hotel room of raping her during the summer of 1967, when Caxton was at the height of his celebrity. Still wealthy at 85, he denies every word of her story, and Banks (In the Dark Places, 2015, etc.) will have his hands full gathering evidence against him, especially since the original case files went missing long ago and DI Annie Cabbot, Banks' right hand on Homicide and Serious Crimes, is busy investigating a much more recent outrage: the case of Mimosa Moffat, a 14-year-old girl who was tossed out of a van on Bradham Lane by three men who had raped her repeatedly, then picked up by another driver who beat and kicked her to death. The investigations of crimes nearly half a century apart will both be developed through a series of knife-sharp interrogations in which the coppers are barely less hostile or prone to anger than the suspects they're questioning. Despite the double plot requiring two virtually unrelated pools of characters, the thematic connections between the cold case and the red-hot case are so pervasive and powerful that the result is one of the most tightly spun tales to come from Robinson's remorseless imagination.

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May 1, 2016
The twenty-third installment in Robinson's popular DCI Banks series largely focuses on the sexual abuse of minors. Those who followed the revelations that beloved British TV and radio star Jimmy Savile was, in reality, a Jekyll and Hyde who used his celebrity to sexually abuse hundreds of young girls, will find that real-life case expanded upon in a really chilling way here. Banks, recently promoted to detective superintendent in North Yorkshire, is asked to head a team investigating cases of historical abusecases not cold, just never reported. An established poet has claimed that superstar presenter Danny Caxton assaulted her in 1967, when she was 14. At the same time, Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot must deal with the murder of another 14-year-old girl, whose body was found along a roadside. Robinson, who has won a clutch of awards, including the Edgar, the UK's Crime Writers' Association's Dagger in the Library Award, and Sweden's Martin Beck Award, delivers another cracking police procedural about an issue that has immediacy. Unfortunately, despite his gripping story lines, Robinson remains a long-winded writer, rarely using one word if 20 are at hand.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)