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

Robinson, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060544333 ISBN 13: 9780060544331

Publisher: William Morrow, 2005

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 this title

About the Author

One of the world’s most popular and acclaimed writers, Peter Robinson was the bestselling, award-winning author of the DCI Banks series. He also wrote two short-story collections and three stand-alone novels, which combined have sold more than ten million copies around the world. Among his many honors and prizes were the Edgar Award, the CWA (UK) Dagger in the Library Award, and the Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy Martin Beck Award.

From the Back Cover

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.

Reviews

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.

Starred Review. In his last outing (Playing With Fire), Insp. Alan Banks nearly died when a serial killer set fire to his cottage in the Yorkshire village of Eastvale, and the melancholic detective remains understandably depressed as this superlative 15th novel in the series gets underway. Living in a rented flat, Banks is struggling to put his life back together when an urgent phone message from his younger brother, Roy—a successful, slightly shady London businessman—requests his help: "It could be a matter of life and death.... Maybe even mine." When he can't reach Roy by phone, Banks travels to London to see what's wrong and finds his brother's house unlocked and no hint about where he might have gone or why. On the night of Roy's phone call, a young woman is shot to death in her car just outside of Eastvale, and she has Banks's name and address in her pocket. Annie Cabbot, Banks's colleague on the force (and a former lover), is in charge of that case, and her investigation quickly intersects with Banks's unofficial sleuthing into his brother's inexplicable disappearance. The gripping story, which revolves around that most heinous of crimes, human trafficking, shows Robinson getting more adept at juggling complex plot lines while retaining his excellent skills at characterization. The result is deeply absorbing, and the nuances of Banks's character are increasingly compelling. Agent, Dominick Abel. (Feb. 15) Forecast: Robinson's reputation in the States (he is English and lives in Canada) continues to build. With the help of a big marketing campaign and an eight-city author tour, this could be a breakout novel for him.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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 home, he finds it totally empty yet filled with disturbing clues as to the source of his brother's money. Banks' estranged lover and sidekick, Detective Annie Cabbot, is left to cope by herself with the investigation of the murder of a young woman on the motorway. When Cabbot finds a letter addressed to Banks on the victim, the reader knows that Robinson will tie the two investigations together in fiendishly clever ways. Another Robinson winner. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Strange Affair

A Novel of SuspenseBy Robinson, Peter

William Morrow & Company

ISBN: 0060544333

Chapter One

Was she being followed? It was hard to tell at that time of night on the motorway. There was plenty of traffic, lorries for the most part, and people driving home from the pub just a little too carefully, red BMWs coasting up the fast lane, doing a hundred or more, businessmen in a hurry to get home from late meetings. She was beyond Newport Pagnell now, and the muggy night air blurred the red tail lights of the cars ahead and the oncoming headlights across the road. She began to feel nervous as she checked her rear-view mirror and saw that the car was still behind her.

She pulled over to the outside lane and slowed down. The car, a dark Mondeo, overtook her. It was too dark to glimpse faces, but she thought there was just one person in the front and another in the back. It didn't have a taxi light on top, so she guessed it was probably a private hire car and stopped worrying. Some rich git being ferried to a nightclub in Leeds, most likely.

She overtook the Mondeo a little further up the motorway and didn't give it a second glance. The late night radio was playing Old Blue Eyes singing "Summer Wind". Her kind of music, no matter how old fashioned people told her it was. Talent and good music never went out of style as far as she was concerned.

When she got to Watford Gap services, she realized she felt tired and hungry, and she still had a long way to go, so she decided to stop for a short break. She didn't even notice the Mondeo pull in two cars behind her.

A few seedy looking people hung around the entrance; a couple of kids who didn't look old enough to drive stood smoking and playing the machines, giving her the eye as she walked past, staring at her breasts.

She went first to the ladies, then to the cafe, where she bought a ham and tomato sandwich and sat alone to eat, washing it down with a Diet Coke. At the table opposite, a man with a long face and dandruff on the collar of his dark suit jacket gave her the eye over the top of his glasses, pretending to read his newspaper and eat a sausage roll.

Was he just a common-or-garden variety perv, or was there something more sinister in his interest? she wondered. In the end, she decided he was just a perv. Sometimes it seemed as if the world was full of them, that she could hardly walk down the street or go for a drink on her own without some sad pillock who thought he was God's gift eyeing her up, like the kids hanging around the entrance, or coming over and laying a line of chat on her. Still, she told herself, what else could you expect at this time of the night in a motorway service station? A couple of other men came in and went to the counter for coffee-to-go, but they didn't give her a second glance.

She finished half the sandwich, dumped the rest and got her travel mug filled with coffee. When she walked back to her car she made sure that there were people around -- a family with two young kids up way up past their bedtime, noisy and hyperactive -- and that no-one was following her.

The tank was only a quarter full, so she filled it up at the petrol station, using her credit card right there, at the pump. The perv from the cafe pulled up at the pump opposite and stared at her as he put the nozzle in the tank. She ignored him. She could see the night manager in his office, watching through the window, and that made her feel more secure.

Tank full, she turned down the slip road and eased in between two articulated lorries. It was hot in the car, so she opened both windows and enjoyed the play of breeze they created. It helped keep her awake, along with the hot black coffee. The clock on the dashboard read 12:35 am. Only about two or three hours to go, then she would safe ...

Continues...

Excerpted from Strange Affairby Robinson, Peter Excerpted by permission.
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Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060544333
• ISBN 13: 9780060544331
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384