Peter Robinson - Friend of the Devil

Review by Brian Lowen live on bookshow 14th Feb 2013

This is another detective story in the series featuring DCI Banks working in the North Yorkshire area and comes recommended by Ian Rankin.

The victim is no older than Bank’s own daughter. Just 19, she is found raped and strangled in the dark tangle of little streets they call the Maze.

There is no shortage of suspects, and Banks finds himself missing DI Annie Cabbot. Their personal problems aside, he could do with her sharp instincts on this case. But Annie has troubles of her own. On loan to the Eastern area, she has been called to investigate the cold-blooded killing of a woman in a wheelchair.

On the face of it, the two deaths have nothing in common, but as Annie digs deeper, she finds something disturbingly familiar in the case. Perhaps she and Banks will find themselves working together again a lot sooner than expected.

This is not an easy book to read as there are far too many names, that I do not think are necessary, and so it is easy to lose track of the story, especially as we have two stories progressing together.  It is a long book of over 500 pages, and although I realise police detective work is one interview after another, it does tend to get a bit ponderous.

I realised after finishing this that I had read another book featuring DCI Banks which was Past Reason Hated, and my review for that was similar to this one, so I won’t be looking out for any more titles by this author.