NY: Scribner, 1993.
My wife’s taste in mystery novels runs to “cozies,” from Agatha Christie to Martha Grimes, while I prefer somewhat more contemporary settings (and more believable plots). Crombie has become a favorite of hers, though, and the reviews have been good, so I promised to give her a try. This debut effort is not especially innovative — which I expect is part of its appeal — but it’s very nicely done.
NY: Morrow, 2012.
Robinson is best known for his lengthy (and excellent) Yorkshire mystery series featuring Detective Inspector Banks. This one, while also set in Yorkshire, is a standalone novel of generally high quality. Chris Lowndes is a talented composer of motion picture scores (“the music no one listens to”) who has lived and worked in California for twenty-five years. But now, nearly a year after the death by cancer of his wife, Laura, Chris has returned to the Dales to try to sort himself out and regain his equilibrium.
London: Heinemann, 1962.
The “Nonesuch” is Sir Waldo Hawkridge, a leader of the athletic and sporting set of not-quite-dandies known during the English Regency as “Corinthians,” and no one can touch him when it comes to boxing or racing a curricle or riding in the hunt. He’s also very wealthy and all his relatives are surprised when their tight-fisted Cousin Joseph Calver leaves Waldo his entire estate. (Largely because he was the only one of the family not to annoy the old man with all the reasons why he ought to be the heir.)
NY: Putnam, 1958.
Between 1921 and 1972, in addition to a number of mysteries and other less-remembered works, Heyer turned out nearly three dozen historical romances set in the Regency era — the second decade of the 19th century, during the close of the generation-long war with France. Naturally, though none of them is terrible, some of them are rather better than others. I’ve read most of them over the years, and I put this delightfully complex story among the top three or four.
NY: St. Martin, 2007.
Ten years ago, as a young Police Constable in York, Rick Rounder failed to prevent a man he had once known at school from murdering his own young daughter and then killing himself. Rick takes it badly, quits the force, and leaves England. Now he’s back, with a gorgeous black Australian-American girlfriend in tow, and attempts to set himself up as a private detective. And his first case, in which he proves himself to be not much of a detective at all, goes completely sideways.
NY: Morrow, 2010.
Twenty-three years ago, this author began a series of detective novels set in the Yorkshire Dales in the north of Britain (a region Londoners traditionally regard as being not far from the edge of the Earth), featuring a prickly, mavericky detective inspector named Alan Banks. He was a sort-of refugee from London himself, facing burnout after a series of physically wearing and emotionally draining cases, and hoping for some kind of redemption Up North. He arrived with a wife and two small children and set about learning the local ropes, which were quite different from the South. Even though I’m a “professional” reader, I somehow only discovered the series myself about three years ago and was almost immediately captivated by the character of now DCI Banks and the supporting players, by the author’s view of the Dales (he’s originally from there, of course), and by the cases with which the police force of Eastvale and environs have had to deal. (more…)
NY: Morrow, 2009.
This is one of the more unsettling episodes in the career of DCI Alan Banks of the North Yorkshire CID. Mark Hardcastle, a local theater set designer from a working class background, is found hanging from a tree in the woods near Eastvale. He was gay and was in a relationship with Laurence Silbert, who had money and a big house — but when the police go to see the latter, they find Silbert viciously beaten to death. Was it a murder-suicide caused by jealousy?
NY: Morrow, 2007.
DCI Alan Banks of the West Yorkshire CID is a pretty good detective, but his old cases seem to have a habit of coming back to haunt him. He starts out with a pretty ordinary rape/murder case in the Maze, a neighborhood of narrow, twisty passages and untenanted Victorian buildings only a minute’s sprint from the police station. The victim was young, bright, and sexy, with a tendency to drink too much with her mates on the weekends, and while Banks has problems with some of the suspects, he expects to solve the case without too much trouble.
NY: Morrow, 2006.
It’s been an eventful year or two for DCI Alan Banks of the North Yorkshire CID. He was burned out of his small cottage and lost everything, nearly including his life. His estranged brother was murdered, but he caught the killer. His old friend and superior, Superintendent Gristhorpe, has finally retired and been replaced by a dangerously ambitious woman. And he’s been on the outs with DI Annie Cabbot, previously his lover and now his friend and colleague. But things seem to be turning around a bit for Banks.
NY: William Morrow, 2005.
I think one of the things I like best about Robinson’s series featuring DCI Alan Banks of the North Yorkshire CID is that they’re unusually true-to-life in their structure. That is, Agatha Christie and P. D. James and most other writers of “detective stories” have always followed a certain pattern. The murder takes place, the author quickly introduces the reader to a clutch of suspects, and says, in effect, “one of these people dunnit.” Even Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch books tend to work that way. But the narrative in Robinson’s novels follow the process of the investigation.
As a retired public librarian (very large system in a very large city), I've been writing book reviews for the consumption of other people for more than 40 years. Since 1999, I've been posting my reviews to a personal website, but I'm now shifting my reviewing jones to this blog.
I have been a semi-professional genealogist since the 1960s and I have another blog of book reviews in the field of family research! To read those, go to BookSmith's Genealogy Book Reviews.
