Strange Affair – Peter Robinson
General Information
=========
Title: Strange Affair
Author: Peter Robinson
Read By: Ron Keith
Copyright: 2005
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks
Series Name: Inspector Banks
Position in Series: 15
File Information
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Number of MP3s: 12
Total Duration: 13:06:44
Total MP3 Size: 360.90
Encoded At: CBR 64 kbit/s 44100 Hz Mono
ID3 Tags: Set, v1.1, v2.3
Book Description
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Strange Affair
FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review
Edgar and Anthony Award-winning author Peter Robinson’s fourth book
is a gritty tale of brothers at odds and a story of unexpected connections.
Alan and Roy Banks were never close. Alan was a normal teenager with
a chaotic room and appalling taste in music. Roy was compulsively neat
and kept a lock on his toy box. Alan went on to become Detective Chief
Inspector Banks, with a solid, if not always shining, police career.
And Roy, estranged from his brother, became a wealthy entrepreneur.
Then Roy disappears, and Alan’s search for him soon confirms his long-held
suspicion that Roy has been operating on the shady side of the law.
When a murdered woman is found in possession of a piece of paper with
Alan’s name scrawled on it, Alan must dig deeper into his brother’s
shadow life. The discovery of the dead woman’s connection to a doctor
who treated prostitutes off the books as a "public service" gives credence
to Alan’s fears. Bit by bit, Alan’s investigation reveals the sickening
evidence of Roy’s involvement in kidnapping and prostitution. But recently,
something must have changed. The Roy he’s unwillingly come to know wouldn’t
have given up his ill-gotten gains lightly or easily.
As Alan begins to wonder whether his brother finally got mixed up in
a crime so terrible that even he had objected, it gradually becomes
clear that Alan himself is in deep trouble. He’s already learned enough
to become a target for whoever had the ruthlessness and power to make
his black-sheep brother disappear. Sue Stone
FROM THE PUBLISHER
"On a warm summer night, an attractive woman hurtles north in a blue
Peugeot with a hastily scrawled address in her pocket, while, back in
London, a desperate man leaves an urgent late-night phone message on
his brother’s answering machine. By sunrise the next morning, the woman
is found inside her car along an otherwise peaceful country lane, shot,
execution-style, through the head." "Welcome to the idyllic Yorkshire
Dales, where Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot arrives on the scene and
discovers, to her surprise, a slip of paper in the dead woman’s pocket
that bears the name of her colleague and erstwhile lover, Detective
Chief Inspector Alan Banks. Banks, meanwhile – already haunted and withdrawn
after nearly dying in the fire that destroyed his home – has gone missing
just when he’s needed most, and has left plenty of questions behind."
As Annie struggles to determine whether or not Banks is safe – and what
role he may have played in the woman’s murder – Banks himself investigates
the mysterious disappearance of his estranged brother, Roy, whose late-night
call for help brings Banks back to London. Working from Roy’s swank
apartment, Banks makes the rounds to Roy’s old haunts and slowly inhabits
the life of his younger brother – the black sheep of the family, who
always seemed to sail a little too close to the wind. As the trail of
clues about Roy’s life and associations draws Banks into a dark circle
of conspiracy and corruption, mobsters and murder, Banks suddenly realizes
he’s running out of time to save Roy, and by digging too deep, he may
be exposing himself and his family to the same – possibly deadly – danger.
FROM THE CRITICS
Patrick Anderson – The Washington Post
Banks admits that he had assumed that prostitutes were in the business
by choice, but the Interpol man shows him that is often not the case.
In exploring the issue of sexual slavery, Robinson joins other crime
writers, and many journalists, in casting a light on dark corners of
our society. John Lescroart’s The Motive, reviewed here recently, took
a hard look at another urgent issue, prosecutorial misconduct, as have
numerous lawyers who have turned to fiction. It is heartening to see
first-rate writers like Robinson and Lescroart becoming, in effect,
muckrakers, for ours is a world with an inexhaustible supply of muck
that needs raking.
Janet Maslin – The New York Times
"Definitely not your everyday quaffing plonk," Mr. Robinson writes descriptivel-
–
–
y in Strange Affair, abiding by two strict rules of this genre: mention
snacks and beverages as often as possible, and don’t stint on the colorful
lingo. But the small stuff is deftly fused with an engrossing crime
story, which also includes the murder of an unknown woman traveling
along a highway. Mr. Robinson stocks the book with chapter-ending cliffhangers,
among other good reasons to follow his well-crafted story. His finishing
stroke of evil is a startling one, even by these books’ standards of
deviant behavior.
Publishers Weekly
In his last outing (Playing With Fire), Insp. Alan Banks nearly died
when a serial killer set fire to his cottage in the Yorkshire village
of Eastvale, and the melancholic detective remains understandably depressed
as this superlative 15th novel in the series gets underway. Living in
a rented flat, Banks is struggling to put his life back together when
an urgent phone message from his younger brother, Roy-a successful,
slightly shady London businessman-requests his help: "It could be a
matter of life and death…. Maybe even mine." When he can’t reach Roy
by phone, Banks travels to London to see what’s wrong and finds his
brother’s house unlocked and no hint about where he might have gone
or why. On the night of Roy’s phone call, a young woman is shot to death
in her car just outside of Eastvale, and she has Banks’s name and address
in her pocket. Annie Cabbot, Banks’s colleague on the force (and a former
lover), is in charge of that case, and her investigation quickly intersects
with Banks’s unofficial sleuthing into his brother’s inexplicable disappearance-
–
–
. The gripping story, which revolves around that most heinous of crimes,
human trafficking, shows Robinson getting more adept at juggling complex
plot lines while retaining his excellent skills at characterization.
The result is deeply absorbing, and the nuances of Banks’s character
are increasingly compelling. Agent, Dominick Abel. (Feb. 15) Forecast:
Robinson’s reputation in the States (he is English and lives in Canada)
continues to build. With the help of a big marketing campaign and an
eight-city author tour, this could be a breakout novel for him. Copyright
2005 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks is still recovering from a fire
that almost took his life (in Playing With Fire) when his estranged
brother Roy leaves a message on his machine pleading for his help. When
he cannot reach Roy, Alan travels to London and finds his brother’s
house unlocked and Roy nowhere to be found. Meanwhile back in Eastvale,
a woman has been found, shot to death execution-style. In her back pocket
is Banks’s address, leaving Detective Inspector Annie Cabot to try to
figure out who the girl is and where Alan has disappeared to. When the
two finally meet up in London, they must work through their personal
differences before they can resolve the two crimes. After a break with
a standalone novel (The First Cut), Robinson returns to a police procedural
series that just keeps getting better. Recommended for all mystery collections.
Robinson lives in Toronto. [See Prepub Mystery, LJ 10/1/04.]-Deborah
Shippy, Moline P.L., IL Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A late-night call from a brother who’s practically a stranger sends
Alan Banks back to another round of soul-searching and skeleton-rattling.
Chief Inspector Banks misses the call because following the loss of
his cottage to an arsonist (Playing with Fire, 2004), he’s out drinking
and extending a dinner invitation that’s shot down. The message he gets
instead from his dodgy brother Roy is both urgent and vague: You’re
the only one who can help me in what could be a matter of life or death,
so call me. When Roy doesn’t answer his phone, Banks decides to use
his vacation to track him down. He breaks into Roy’s posh home in Kensington,
rifles his papers, and searches his computer as if Roy were a particularly
vicious criminal, but gets nowhere. Meanwhile, Banks’s colleagues back
in North Yorkshire Major Crimes have their own case: the shooting of
Jennifer Clewes, administrative director at a women’s health center
who was carrying Banks’s address in her pocket. Clearly the two riddles
are connected, but fans of Robinson’s acclaimed series won’t expect
any special ingenuity in linking them up. A keener disappointment is
the absence of any new characters as interesting as Banks and his squad,
whose ever-changing relationships provide not only the usual sharp vignettes
but much of the momentum you’d expect from the mystery. Below Robinson’s
high average, then, though he’s always worth reading. Mystery Guild
featured alternate selection; author tour. Agent: Dominick Abel/Dominick
Abel Associates
Amazon.com
Without a doubt, the family and friends of fictional sleuths are two
of the most endangered species on the planet. Crime novelists seem to
have no qualms about sacrificing the people nearest and dearest to their
protagonists, if doing so will advance plot development or bestow emotional
depth upon their series stars. Peter Robinson continues this ruthless
tradition in Strange Affair, his tension-packed 15th novel featuring
headstrong British Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks. Still on the
mend after the blazing finale of 2004’s Playing with Fire, temporarily
sworn off whiskey but back to smoking, Banks is interrupted in the midst
of brooding over his life and failed relationships by a message from
his estranged younger brother, Roy, who says he needs the DCI’s help
in "a matter of life and death." Concerned, especially since Roy boasts
a history of dubious business dealings, Banks leaves Yorkshire for his
sibling’s home in London, only to find that residence unlocked, Roy’s
computer missing, and his cell phone left behind. After learning that
Roy was last seen stepping into a car with an unidentified man, and
receiving on Roy’s mobile what appears to be a photo of his only brother
slumped over in a chair, the cop fears that a kidnapping has occurred.–
Meanwhile, back in Eastvale, Banks’s colleague and ex-lover, Detective
Inspector Annie Cabbot, probes the shooting death of Jennifer Clewes,
a 27-year-old family planning center administrator from London who’s
been found in her car, with the address of Banks’s once-ruined (and
recently broken into) cottage tucked into her jeans pocket. As Annie
seeks to identify Clewes’s attacker and determine whether this crime
fits a pattern of roadway assaults, she’s anxious also to discover what
connection Banks may have to the case. But the DCI is frustratingly
nowhere to be found.
Like 2003’s Close to Home, Strange Affair adds some welcome bricks to
Banks’s back story, this time forcing him to reappraise a brother whom
he had long resented and distrusted. Simultaneously, Robinson’s latest
police procedural delivers artfully contrived, intersecting story lines
charged with rumors of international arms dealing, hints of misdeeds
at a women’s clinic, secondary players so shady they might be invisible
after sundown, and insights into just how far Banks’s career has distanced
him from folks less steeped in the ugly side of mankind. An immensely
satisfying mystery, filled with professional risks and personal regrets,
this is truly an Affair to remember. –J. Kingston Pierce–This text
refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In his last outing (Playing With Fire), Insp. Alan Banks
nearly died when a serial killer set fire to his cottage in the Yorkshire
village of Eastvale, and the melancholic detective remains understandably
depressed as this superlative 15th novel in the series gets underway.
Living in a rented flat, Banks is struggling to put his life back together
when an urgent phone message from his younger brother, Royùa successful,
slightly shady London businessmanùrequests his help: "It could be a
matter of life and death…. Maybe even mine." When he can’t reach Roy
by phone, Banks travels to London to see what’s wrong and finds his
brother’s house unlocked and no hint about where he might have gone
or why. On the night of Roy’s phone call, a young woman is shot to death
in her car just outside of Eastvale, and she has Banks’s name and address
in her pocket. Annie Cabbot, Banks’s colleague on the force (and a former
lover), is in charge of that case, and her investigation quickly intersects
with Banks’s unofficial sleuthing into his brother’s inexplicable disappearance-
–
. The gripping story, which revolves around that most heinous of crimes,
human trafficking, shows Robinson getting more adept at juggling complex
plot lines while retaining his excellent skills at characterization.
The result is deeply absorbing, and the nuances of Banks’s character
are increasingly compelling. Agent, Dominick Abel. (Feb. 15) Forecast:
Robinson’s reputation in the States (he is English and lives in Canada)
continues to build. With the help of a big marketing campaign and an
eight-city author tour, this could be a breakout novel for him.
Copyright ⌐ Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
All rights reserved.–This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
See all Editorial Reviews
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Product Details
Hardcover: 384 pages
ISBN: 0060544333
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