Caedmon's Song

Robinson, Peter

ISBN 10: 140504165X ISBN 13: 9781405041652

Publisher: Macmillan Audio Books, 2003

When she awakes in hospital, she has no recollection of that brutal night. But then, slowly and painfully, details reveal themselves - dreams of two figures, one white and one black, hovering over her, wisps of a strange and haunting song; the unfamiliar texture of a rough and deadly hand . . .

In another part of England, Martha Browne arrives in Whitby, posing as an author doing research for a book. But her research is of a particularly macabre variety. Who is she hunting with such deadly determination? And why?

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Review

Steadily, inexorably, Peter Robinson has been building a rock-solid following for his highly accomplished crime novels--and it's not hard to see why. Books like his latest, Caedmon's Song, have all the requisite page-turning compulsiveness, but Robinson freights in a layer of psychological penetration that many in the genre strive for but few achieve.

A university student has unwisely decided to walk though a night-shrouded park. She is savagely assaulted and wakes in hospital with her memory of the attack wiped clean. Through her tortured consciousness, impressions slowly begin to appear: memories of her attackers--there were two--begin to coalesce. Robinson's sympathy and understanding for the anguish of the student, Kirsten, is detailed with much understated skill and we become as keen as she is to crack the identity of her attackers.

But this is only one of Robinson's plot strands: his other protagonist, Martha Browne, has made her way to the historic seaside town of Whitby with a hidden agenda. Outwardly she is an author doing research for a forthcoming book, but beneath the surface she is tracking down, with steely determination, a malign figure. Who is this mysterious quarry? And what is the connection with the hospitalised student? Robinson is in no hurry to make these connections and the delicious frustration for the reader only increases the determination to read on.

While the plotting here has precisely the kind of jewel-like precision to be found in such previous Robinson titles as The Summer That Never Was and Aftermath, he's clearly not content to rest with the level of observation that distinguished those books: here, the pertinent comments on society and our attitude to criminals never derail the storytelling panache. Instead they act as the kind of shoring-up that lends weight and power to crime novels. --Barry Forshaw

Review

Written back in 1990 but previously unpublished in the UK, this is one of Peter Robinson's earliest books. Taking a break from Inspector Banks he decided to write a book based on the victim's perspective rather than a police procedural. This creepy, suspenseful book was the result. Set on the Yorkshire coast, Martha Browne is supposedly researching a book whilst further inland a spate of student murders is causing a serial killer scare amongst the universities of the North. Flitting between Kirsten, the one survivor of the serial killer, and Martha, Robinson slowly but surely builds up the tension page by page. No stopping at the end of any chapter here, it is definitely a one-sitting read. Characteristically Yorkshire-based with detailed descriptions of the locations to draw the reader in, the writing is taut and tantalising displaying Robinson's skills at writing from the other side of the coin. A must for all Robinson fans. - Lucy Watson

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