Bits and pieces of this book I liked. Occult, pedophilia, and serial killer/psychopath themes. As usual, humane. ( )

I am becoming a big fan of Inspector Banks mysteries. He is such an ordinary "copper", and I love watching his thought processes as he tries to solve a case. In this case, a seven year old girl goes missing. All the stops are pulled out to try to find her, but before they can they find a murdered man in an abandoned quarry? It doesn't look like the two cases are related but as Banks investigates he finds out all kinds of things, and he finds a link between the two cases. I love the characters in these books, and I love the mysteries. For anyone who likes British police procedurals, this is not a series to be missed. ( )

Sixth DCI Alan Banks British police procedural mystery set in Yorkshire. A seven-year-old girl is abducted from her mother’s Eastvale home by a man and a woman posing as social workers, and the race is on for Banks and his crew to find her before she turns up dead. Having two people in on such an abduction is unusual, since pedophiles generally work alone, so Jenny Fuller, psychologist, is once again called in on the case to advise the police on what they might be looking for. A couple of days later, an ex-con working as a gardener to one of the local ‘country estate’ owners turns up dead in an old mine, disemboweled and slit stem to stern and Alan must take his attention away from Gemma Scupham’s case to find Carl Johnson’s murderer. When some odd coincidences make it seem that the two cases are somehow related, the clues start stacking up and it’s a furious race to the finish. Excellent entry in this series, possibly the best one so far. None of the things that sometimes annoy me about Alan did in this book. Whether that was just my mood or whether the author had actually toned down those things (for one thing, the constant and repeated descriptions of Alan and his co-workers smoking and drinking) enough that I didn’t notice them, I don’t know, but I enjoyed it ( )

I was right, these Inspector Banks books are a very good read.

John Banks finds himself up against a very frightening, clever and unstable criminal. There are random crimes seemingly unrelated including the abduction of a young girl and a murder. Gradually, they all seem to link together leading to an exciting conclusion. ( )

This is the 5th Inspector Banks novel by Canadian author Peter Robinson. Set in the English village of Swainshead, where a seven-year-old girl is kidnapped, and there is a dreadful possibility of ritual satanic abuse. A corpse is found at an abandoned mine. When the two cases converge, Inspector Banks confronts one of the most truly terrifying villains he will ever meet. This is a very good series, growing more fascinating and richly detailed with each book. ( )