Review: CARELESS LOVE, Peter Robinson

• this edition published in 2018 by Hodder & Stoughton UK
• ISBN 978-1-444-78698-9
• 340 pages
• source: my local library
• #25 in the Alan Banks series
• author website

Synopsis (publisher)

A young local student has apparently committed suicide. Her body is found in an abandoned car on a lonely country road. She didn't own a car. Didn't even drive. How did she get there? Where did she die? Who moved her, and why?

Meanwhile a man in his sixties is found dead in a gully up on the wild moorland. He is wearing an expensive suit and carrying no identification. Post-mortem findings indicate he died from injuries sustained during the fall. But what was he doing up there? And why are there no signs of a car in the vicinity?

As the inconsistencies multiply and the mysteries proliferate, Annie's father's new partner, Zelda, comes up with a shocking piece of information that alerts Banks and Annie to the return of an old enemy in a new guise. This is someone who will stop at nothing, not even murder, to get what he wants - and suddenly the stakes are raised and the hunt is on.
 
My Take

Very readable police procedural.

Bank's small team is called to deal with 2 deaths, one a young female uni student, and the other a financier in his 60s. At first the deaths do not seem to be murders but there is no way to explain how the bodies came to be where they are. The young woman appears to have died from a drug overdose but she is sitting in a car waiting to be towed away, and she wasn't there just days before. The man on the other hand is at the bottom of a gully on the moors with a broken neck. It seems unlikely that he walked there.

Then Banks is notified by a colleague of another dead girl and investigation seems to throw up links with the first girl.

I must admit that I came up with a scenario that connected everything up, about 100 pages bcfore the end, but I'm delighted to report that I was wrong!

I love the character development in these novels, both of Banks' team getting on with their lives, and the new characters who become part of the investigation.

There are references to plots from earlier titles in the series (hard to believe we are up to #25), and I should warn readers that the plots have taken a very different path to those of the television series.

My rating : 4.8


I've also read
FRIEND OF THE DEVIL (2007)
4.6, ALL THE COLOURS OF DARKNESS (2008)
4.6, BAD BOY (2010)
4.9. BEFORE THE POISON
4.7, WATCHING THE DARK (2013)
4.3, CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION
4.8, ABATTOIR BLUES
4.4, THE PRICE OF LOVE
4.5, BEFORE THE POISON
4.6, SLEEPING IN THE GROUND