Innocent Graves (Inspector Banks Novels) by Peter Robinson Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Innocent Graves (Inspector Banks Novels)
Book Review: A complex study of humanity
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is more than just a finely crafted mystery story. Robinson delves into the human psyche with this book, and we see what circumstances can do to an ordinary man in his Owen Pierce character. Pierce is arrested for the murder of a young girl in a graveyard, and we see what his charging and sentencing and his time in prison do to him. Banks is not convinced that he is the killer though even though the forensic evidence is strong. This is a haunting tale that stays with you long after you close the book. It is a tragedy of a life lost and a life wasted. When the actual murderer is caught the motive and situation is so tawdry that even the usually unflappable Banks feels great sadness. I am really getting to like CI Banks, and look forward to more about him and the unusual cases that he comes across.Book Review: Another Gripping Tale from the Author
Summary: 5 Stars
Peter Robinson grew up in Yorkshire, and is the author of a number of previous novels featuring Inspector Banks. He is the winner of numerous awards in the United States, Britain and Canada, and in 2002 he won the CWA Dagger in the Library. As I also come from Leeds the background to his stories is something that I have experienced first hand and because of this I have a special affection for his books. However they would be first class crime fiction wherever they were based.
Having said that I can understand to a degree why some readers may not like the books. Banks is a character that has grown over several books and the author is very comfortable not only with the character of Banks, but all the other character too. To me this makes the stories flow because the author instinctively knows how his characters are going to react in certain situations. The books are produced as a series and it is nice if you can read them all in the order they were written, but this is by no means compulsory as each book stands alone. They are what I would call `light' reading. By that I mean that they flow and not that they are third rate in any sense, in fact quite the opposite.
As murders go the strangling of a teenage girls with the strap of her own school satchel was nothing out of the ordinary for Inspector Banks. It just seemed that much more brutal in a quiet Yorkshire village than it would have done on the streets of central London where human beings didn't seem to care too much what they did to one another.
Deborah Harrison had been found in the local church yard one foggy night, but she was no ordinary sixteen-year-old, her father was an extremely powerful man who mixed in the highest orders of industry, defence and information of a classified nature. Even poor Deborah seemed to have her own secrets.
Book Review: Banks Number Eight: Excellent
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Book Review: Disappointing
Summary: 2 Stars
I've enjoyed the Inspector Banks series in the past (particularly "Final Account" which had a great twist in the last few pages), but "Innocent Graves" is all talk and very little pay-off. Banks himself continues to be an interesting character, and Robinson's writing is never less than superb, but this particular mystery was a big "who cares?" for me. The mystery itself isn't really much of a mystery and its solution has more to do with blind luck and a piece of evidence that just happens to appear, like a deus ex machina at the last moment, than it does with any brilliant deduction on Banks's part. "Innocent Graves" seems far more interested in the psychology of the suspects (one in particular, whose story concludes in an all too predictable fashion) than in satisfying its readers with a great solution to the crime. I've always found this kind of mystery a bit of a bore; give me a couple of corpses and some brilliant twists and I'm happy. There are a couple of corpses here, but no twist; just a far too unbelievable and uninteresting ending.Book Review: Not One of Robinson's Best
Summary: 3 Stars
Peter Robinson always delivers a good read, but this one, I feel, is inferior to the others I've read. I dunno: I just felt this book wasted a lot of time and space mostly going nowhere. The key to the whole mystery was revealed by a serendipitous finding -- just a little too convenient for my liking. There was a good courtroom drama, which was a refreshing innovation by Robinson. But, all in all, I thought this was a fairly dull book. I've always felt that English police procedurals were different than Yank procedurals in that the English ones are slower paced but more intellectually weighty. The American ones pack more impact and razzle dazzle and keep you glued to the pages. But I think Robinson let this one get away from him. Too much talk; not enough credible action.
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