In A Dry Season [Mass Market Paperback]

On the outs with their superiors, Detective Inspector Banks and Detective Sergeant Annie Cabbot are lumbered with a case that is supposed to frustrate and annoy them--and find the challenge fascinating. When a reservoir dries out, a flooded village emerges and a boy finds a skeleton buried in an outhouse--by solid police work, and the use of experts, Banks and Cabbot find out who she was and when she died, and then have to find out why. The reader knows more than they do of course--elderly crime writer Vivien has written her own account of what happened during World War Two when she was an intense unhappy teenager, and this is presented in alternate chapters--but there are surprises still in store... An intense sense of period and a celebration of the virtues of solid investigation, this admirable combination of the police procedural and the psychological period thriller was nominated for the Edgar, the US crime writers' best of the year award. Peter Robinson's acute portrayal of his flawed, humane detectives and the charismatic doomed victim the truth of whose death they are trying to uncover has a desperate sadness which comes together in a climax of unexpected power. --Roz Kaveney --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Anyone who loves a good mystery should curl up gratefully with a cuppa to enjoy this rich 10th installment of the acclaimed British police procedural series. Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks, on the skids since the breakup with wife Sandra, languishes in "career Siberia" until old nemesis Chief Constable Riddle sends him to remotest Yorkshire on a "dirty, pointless, dead-end case." It seems a local kid has discovered a skeleton in dried-up Thornfield Reservoir, constructed on the site of the deserted bucolic village of Hobb's End. Banks taps into his familiar network of colleagues to identify the skeleton as that of Gloria Shackleton, a gorgeous, provocative "land girl" who worked on a Hobb's End farm while her husband was off fighting the Japanese decades ago. Apparently, Gloria had been stabbed to death. As Banks and Detective Sergeant Annie Cabbot struggle to re-create the 50-year-old crime scene, wartime Yorkshire, with all its deprivations and depravities, springs to life. (Banks revives, too, showing renewed interest in his job, and in women.) Robinson brilliantly interweaves the story of Banks's investigation with an ambiguous manuscript by detective novelist "Vivian Elmsley," a 70-ish woman once Gloria's sister-in-law. Is the manuscript a memoir of events leading to Gloria's vicious murder, or "all just a story"? Either way, every detail rings true. Once again, Robinson's work stands out for its psychological and moral complexity, its startling evocation of pastoral England and its gritty, compassionate portrayal of modern sleuthing. Agent, Dominick Abel. Author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

YA-A fascinating whodunit. Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks is called to attend to a skeleton found in the ruins of a deserted village. Flooded by a reservoir shortly after World War II, Hobb's End had been under water until a recent drought exposed its remnants. Thanks to modern forensics, Banks and the local Detective Sergeant, Annie Cabbot, learn that the remains were those of a young woman who had been strangled and then viciously stabbed numerous times. An apparent 50-year-old crime faces Banks and Cabbot as they go about gathering facts in an attempt to determine the identities of the victim and her murderer. The charm of this story lies in the way it is played out. Readers are privy to the thoughts of the characters from 50 years ago as their story is told as it happened. Chapter by chapter, readers learn about life in a small village in England during World War II. Interspersed with these chapters are the investigations, interviews, and research conducted by the detectives in the present day. The traits and foibles of the townspeople take shape and a portrait of the victim emerges. Despite its length, mystery buffs will find this book an easy read, and they'll be left with some questions to ponder that would make for an interesting and lively book discussion.
Carol DeAngelo, Kings Park Library, Burke, VA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Robinson's latest in the Inspector Banks series is actually two parallel stories: the brutal post-World War II murder of a young British woman and the solving of the crime some 40 years later. A major complication for the investigators is that the town where the murder was committed has been covered by a reservoir for decades, eliminating most physical traces of the crime. Banks must painstakingly piece together the spotty record of the townspeople long after most of them have moved to other areas or died of old age. Robinson switches back and forth from present-day sleuthing to the time of the actual murder, with the characters of both time periods well developed and complex. Robinson tells a compelling story of war-time England that rings true. Highly recommended for all public libraries.
-ACaroline Mann, Univ. of Portland Lib., OR
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Estranged from his carping wife, and still in the doghouse with petty Chief Constable Jeremiah Riddle after his freelance investigations in Blood at the Root (1997), Eastvale's Chief Inspector Alan Banks doesn't expect much good newsand his worst fears seem confirmed when Jimmy Riddle packs him off to Harksmere, where a drought and an inquisitive boy have combined to reveal a 50-year-old corpse under the rotting floor of a building no longer submerged in the parched Thornfield Reservoir. There's clearly no glory to be won solving so ancient a case, especially when the local investigating force consists of one sergeant, Anne Cabbot, and almost everyone who might know what happened in the abandoned village of Hobb's End is now as dead as the village itself. Starting with hints from the corpse (some fine, unobtrusive pathological work here), Banks and Cabbot slowly narrow their focus to the the household of Matthew Shackletona farm boy who went off to the war in 1941 after marrying lively land girl Gloria Stringerand of his sister Gwen. Meantime, mystery novelist Vivian Elmsley, hearing of the grisly find beneath the reservoir, cowers (why?) in anticipation of Banks's knock at her own door. Crosscutting dexterously between past and present, courtesy of Vivian's memoir of the days when the countryside was shorn of its native males and overrun by charming Yanks, Robinson delicately reveals a web of passion and pain whose pattern still isnt complete. If the plot's outline echoes that of Reginald Hill's On Beulah Height (1998), the grand scale and warm compassion of Banks's tenth case vault him into Hill's select company. For all his troubles at home, this is Banks's finest hour. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

"The equal of legends of the genre such as P.D. James and Ruth Rendell".

-- St. Louis Post Dispatch --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

When a boy finds a skeleton buried in a dried-up reservoir, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks is brought back from career Siberia to head what seems like a routine, dead-end investigation. He finds it is anything but.

With the help of Detective Sergeant Annie Cabbot, another exile, Banks uncovers long-kept secrets in a community that prefers to forget its past. Banks's work on the case fills a void in his life and consumes him in a way few other cases have.

While Banks and Annie pursue their investigation, Gwen Shackleton relates her tale of Hobb's End, the Yorkshire village that died before the reservoir was built. Her narrative, touched with both innocence and irony, takes us from 1941 to 1945, recreating another age, an age of rationing, of Land Girls, of American airmen, of dances and movies - and of murder.

As Banks and Annie dig to uncover the deceptive and desperate relationships of over fifty years ago, suspense heightens and the past finally bursts through into the present with terrifying consequences.

Peter Robinson grew up in Leeds, Yorkshire. He emigrated to Canada in 1974 and attended York University and the University of Windsor, where he later served as writer in residence. He received the 1992 Arthur Ellis Award for Crime Fiction for Past Reason Hated and was nominated for Dead Right. He was shortlisted for the John Creasey Award in Britain for his first Chief Inspector Banks mystery, Gallows View. Past Reason Hated also won the 1994 TORGI Talking Book of the Year Award for fiction. Wednesday’s Child and In a Dry Season were nominated for Edgar Awards. Peter Robinson lives in Toronto.