Bad Boy, Peter Robinson, William Morrow, $25.99.
I read this book practically in one sitting. It's long, it's complex, and it's absolutely terrific. As a writer, Robinson has developed from a pure genre mystery writer to a real novelist. Elizabeth George and P.D. James would be writers in the same class as Robinson, and his creation, Alan Banks, is one of the solid classics of contemporary mystery fiction.
As he usually does, Robinson takes a situation that's simple on the surface - and then he starts to mess with it. (Maybe this is his version of personal criminal behavior). In the opening sequence a distraught woman comes into the police station, looking for Banks, who is on a vacation nursing wounds from his recently imploded love life. She instead gets the more than capable Annie Cabot, and what she tells her is that she's found a gun in her daughter's room.
The gun laws in Britain are a little different, and a whole lot stricter, than the ones in the United States. Merely having one in your possession lands you in prison, and so the horrifying thought that the woman in question is doing the right thing - but at the same time putting her daughter in prison - makes the whole thing much messier emotionally. In asking for Banks, she'd been looking for the help of an old friend: their daughters are friends who grew up together.
When the officers go to the house to get the gun and take the daughter into custody, things go terribly wrong. There's a death associated with the pick up, and meanwhile Tracy Banks goes to the young woman's boyfriend to let him know what's up. His response is to grab a duffle bag and pack it to go - taking Tracy with him.
Tracy likes the idea of being with a "bad boy", crossing to a different side of the street from her Dad, but the longer she's with this man, Jaff, the more things begin to sour for her, and it's not long before she really is a hostage. When Banks comes back from his trip he's greeted at the airport with the news that not only is his daughter missing, but that his old friend's daughter might go to prison for possessing a gun.
Of course this makes the focus of the jet lagged Banks razor sharp as he leaves no stone unturned - including many pretty dodgy looking rocks that are covering various players in the London criminal underground, of which Jaff, as it turns out, is a part.
One of Robinson's gifts is tying together narrative suspense with emotional suspense. This far in you're pretty invested, as a reader, in Banks, but I think even a reader coming in to this installment first will be invested. It's a father trying to find his daughter. The writing, as always, is beautiful; Robinson's quiet competence, much like Banks' own, taking on a greater luster as the story proceeds to the breakneck finish.
There's a particularly lovely scene at the end of the book between Banks and Tracy that seems to encompass all the things present in a parent child relationship, both good and bad. Robinson isn't a showoff, he makes this all somehow look easy, but he is one of the greatest writers of British police novels now at work. Start with this one or start at the beginning of the series - just don't miss this terrific writer.
To browse more reviews, use the navigation links at the top of the page.