Cold is the Grave: The 11th novel in the number one bestselling Inspector Alan Banks crime series (The Inspector Banks series, 11) - Hardcover

Robinson, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0333901916 ISBN 13: 9780333901915

Publisher: Macmillan, 2001

Synopsis

GOODBYE, INSPECTOR MORSE... HELLO, INSPECTOR BANKS In Peter Robinson's latest mystery in his award winning Alan Banks series, the Detective is sent to the capital in search of a missing runaway - with tragic results. DCI Alan Banks is more than a little surprised when his boss, Chief Superintendent Riddle, asks for his help - for it is well known that Riddle detests Banks. But Riddle's 16-year-old daughter has run away and he wants Banks to use his unorthodox methods to bring her home without fuss. Banks tracks Emily to London, where she is living in luxury with a south London gangster, and at first she refuses to return with him. But when the young girl turns up at Banks' hotel that night, beaten and scared, he is pulled even deeper into events. Especially when three months later - supposedly back safely in the bosom of her family - Emily suffers a gruesome and decidedly suspicious death . . .

About this title

Review

'A writer at the very height of his powers' Ian Rankin

From the Author

Like so many stories, Cold is the Grave started with a simple, "What if.?"

In this case, what if a young boy, not really old enough to understand what he was seeing, found himself by mistake at an Internet porn site looking at pictures of his runaway teenage sister? And what if this wayward girl happened to be the daughter of the Chief Constable, Detective Inspector Alan Banks's overbearing and malicious boss? Naturally, the best man for the job of finding her and bringing her home is Banks himself, and so the story begins.

It seemed to me that over the last three or four books, Chief Constable Riddle had become a stereotypical by-the-book boss, the sort of person we have all had to deal at one time or another in our working lives, with an unexplained loathing for Banks. I could either keep things that way until I simply tired of him and had him retire, or I could pick up the challenge and try to make him a more sympathetic, understandable human being: someone who has good reasons for being the way he is. I chose the latter course, and through trying to find out what makes him tick, I came up with the story behind the Riddle family, in the process discovering the reason he has such a particular loathing for Banks.

In order to find Riddle's daughter, Banks first has to head to London's sleazy Soho district, far from his regular North Yorkshire patch, but he is soon back up there among the drystone walls, the steeply rising dalesides, the limestone scars and the cobbled market squares, the crumbling castles and narrow, twisting streets of Eastvale. This is the landscape I fell in love with as a child, when I first visited it with my father on his photographic expeditions. We would set off by bus or train, as we didn't have a car, on daytrips to Richmond, Knaresborough, Ripon or Skipton, where I would wait around until the light was right for my father's photographs I never thought then that the landscape would become such a part of my life's work, but looking back, I must have been absorbing it and observing its nuances as I waited for the sun to come out from behind a cloud.

I've always thought that Banks and I led very similar lives until we diverged in our late teens-me to university, teaching and writing, and Banks to the police, marriage and children-and that has always allowed me to pass off certain of my early memories and experiences as his. This is no less a feature of Cold is the Grave as it is of the other books, and here you'll find Banks musing about a school friend who disappeared without trace and a nasty incident down by the canal. Banks's sergeant, Annie Cabbot, also has to confront her past in this book, where people are rarely what they seem, and their reactions to events and revelations are as unpredictable as the Yorkshire weather.

Writing the book was as much a voyage of discovery for me as I hope it will be for the reader. As usual, when I posed my simple "What if?" I had no idea what the journey would be like, what more I would discover about Banks and Annie, and what complications would result, what secrets would be revealed.

About this edition

• Publisher: Macmillan
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0333901916
• ISBN 13: 9780333901915
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 464