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Product Description
From Amazon
The more Chief Inspector Alan Banks investigates the murder of a schoolgirl in a church graveyard the less he likes the whole sordid affair. The vicar at St. Mary's has been allegedly seeking sex from his sexton; the vicar's wife has been seeking solace in a bottle and the arms of a schoolteacher; and those in and around the church aren't keen on anybody who doesn't view matters as they do. And there happens to be a few suspects who meet that description. Banks investigates a murder and finds religious and societal affairs stickier than those in the normal mystery.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Moving his ever dependable Yorkshire-based copper, Alan Banks (Final Account, 1995, etc.), to the periphery of this work, the equally dependable Robinson focuses instead on the tragic plight of a possibly innocent man charged with murder. In the process, Robinson adds another level of nuance to his already fully dimensioned fiction and takes a quantum leap as a writer. A schoolgirl is murdered on church ground. Her school bag is left open, and her clothes are disturbed. The local vicar is already embroiled in a sex scandal, and his adulterous wife is wandering drunkenly through the grounds when the body is found. Without a decent motive, but with a plethora of damning evidence, Banks is led to one Owen Pierce, a moody young schoolteacher. Pierce is revealed as a man with enough minor aberrations in his life to fashion a believable criminal. His smutty tastes in literature, photography and teenage women invite easy condemnation, and he is further burdened with a past lover who nurses a deep grievance against him. If Banks has occasionally appeared a shade too decent and placid in past works, this eighth appearance finds him with a new, sharper edge. Banks is still a kindly enough soul, but he knowingly occupies a world that has suddenly become more richly treacherous.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
You Have No Idea Where This is Going - But That is Fun,
By
This review is from: Innocent Graves: An Inspector Banks Mystery (Paperback)
Inspector Banks is a combination of routine boring police work and minor details to horrors that we do not want to think about.As usual Peter Robinson keeps us glued to the book, oblivious to our surroundings. Jack in Toronto, and no relation, or maybe I am.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.9 out of 5 stars (16 customer reviews) 11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Banks Number Eight: Excellent,
By snalen "snalen" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Innocent Graves (Mass Market Paperback)
Well, here's the 8th Banks novel in which a teenage pupil at the posh local private girls' school is found strangled in a graveyard. Suspicion alights on a Croatian refugee, Ive Jelacic; but while Banks is busy investigating that and other leads, his colleagues DI Barry Stott and DS Jim Hatchley get on the scent of a suspicious stranger spotted in a nearby pub and a nearby restaurant around the time of the crime. They are soon led to Owen Pierce, a local college lecturer, and very soon Pierce finds himself arrested and charged with murder.This books stands out among the Banks novels so far in the prominence it allows to a secondary character. So much so that Pierce, the character in question, isn't really secondary at all but becomes very much the centre of the book to at lest as great a degree as does Banks. And it's s much a courtroom drama as a detective story, a long and very effective section of the narrative being taken up with Pierce's trial, a section during which Banks himself fades into the background. Compared to its predecessors in the Banks series I thought it about the best so far and a significant raising of his game on the part of Robinson: dark and clever and very gripping. 6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Refreshing change from the everyday mystery!,
By HM - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Innocent Graves: An Inspector Banks Mystery (Paperback)
This is the first book I have read from Robinson, and the only thing I regret is not finding this book sooner! This is an awesome novel by the extremely talented and humble Robinson. I must say, I truly enjoyed it for all it is worth. It is so deep, interesting, intelligant and inquesitive murder mystery. Never have I read a book that was so formally thought out. When you think you know who the killer is, there is always a twist and find myself questioning just how Peter Robinson will get himself put out of this theory, it alsmost seems impossible, but he always does. What guy. Pick up his books and read it people, honestly.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Inspector Banks is an apathetic cipher., but story is great,
By "inthefoam2" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Innocent Graves (Hardcover)
This novel takes life seriously and asks the reader to examine some of his beliefs and assumptions about the world and existence. Unlike almost every crime novel (Thomas Cook and M. Connelly excluded)I read, this story has depth and "meat on its bones." For example we see how the police and the justice system can drive an innocent party to commit a heinous crime, which was only committed because the police were so eager to bring someone, anyone to trial. Also, we meet several very real lpeople, struggling to make it in life. Robinson pulls no punches in his gritty (often ugly) depiction of police officers and the squalid atmosphere of a police station for someone accused of a crime. Robinson pulls few punches in this story. Two problems, one major: 1)Minor: The parents of the murdered girl simply disappear from the novel--they needed a fuller role as the novel progressed; 2)Major problem: Main character, Banks, is flat and boring. His responses to what is going on around him almost make me think that he is clinically depressed, but Robinson doesn't give the reader any help in understanding the "major" character in the novel. Also, I assume the author wants us to think that Banks is an intelligent detective, but his willingness to acquiesce in the quick arrest of a suspect based on rather flimsy evidence and the zealousness of a clearly neurotic (obsessive) officer under his command makes this reader think that Banks is both apathetic (doesn't care who is arrested)and a poor detective.
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