Not Safe After Dark

There is more than one version of this collection and I read the original edition that my library had. There are 13 stories first published between 1989 and 1998, many in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. These are crime stories, murder mysteries, and for the most part I didn't enjoy them. The ick factor is a little too high for me in a couple of these stories. There were a couple I thought pretty good but my overall impression was that these are not stories I want to read. I very rarely read stories of this type so I have no way of judging whether these are better or worse than the usual.

The last story, "In Flanders Field" was my favorite of the collection I'd say, and it was newly written for this book. I also really liked the Thomas show more Hardy inspired "Two Ladies of Rose Cottage." For my tastes the subject matter and story quality improved greatly as we moved from early stories to later ones. The sex crimes at the start of the collection put me off. show less

Not Safe After Dark by Peter Robinson is a highly recommended collection of twenty short stories. All the stories in the collection are finely crafted, featuring well-written dialogue and surprising plot twists. Included are three Inspector Alan Banks police procedurals. I enjoyed the majority of these short stories immensely and was legitimately surprised and shocked by a few of the endings.

Contents:
Summer Rain: A young man who believes in reincarnation is sure he was murdered in his last previous life.
Fan Mail: A fan of a writer sends fan mail asking for help in planning the murder of his wife.
Innocence: Reed travels two hundred miles away from home to meet with his friend Francis, who never shows up. This sets into motion a series of show more coincidences in his life.
Murder in Utopia: Utopia was a model mill workers' village built in 1873. "As there was no crime in Utopia, no police force was required, and we relied on constables from nearby townships in the unlikely event that any real unpleasantness or unrest should arise."
Not Safe after Dark: City parks are not safe places to walk after dark. All the guide books state this. But what would be the harm in taking a short walk among the trees by the lake to cool off on a hot summer night?
Just My Luck: Walter Dimchuk, a confirmed Torontonian, attends a convention in Los Angeles, a place he has never taken seriously.
Anna Said: In this Inspector Banks tale, a woman dies, likely from food poisoning.
Missing in Action: An Edgar Award-winning story about the disappearance of a nine-year-old boy in the early days of WWII that sparks a mob mentality.
Memory Lane: The band Memory Lane plays oldies at a nursing home.
Carrion: Two strangers in a pub strike up a casual acquaintance that completely alters the life of one of them.
April in Paris: A girl in a cafe in Paris reminds someone of a girl he knew named April
The Good Partner: An Inspector Banks tale. A woman is murdered, presumably by her husband.
Some Land in Florida: Santa Claus is found face down in a pool and it might not have been an accident.
The Wrong Hands: Mitch draws up a will for Mr. Garibaldi and is given an additional task. He is asked to hand over to the police an unregistered gun that has been kept hidden for years.
The Two Ladies of Rose Cottage: Set in 1939, two elderly women, Miss Eunice and Miss Teresa, have the police pull up outside their cottage and rumors begin to fly about murder and human bones dug up in the garden.
Lawn Sale: A man's home has been broken in to and they have taken his wife's jewelry.
Gone to the Dawgs: Calvin Bly is tired of Charlie Firth winning the NFL football pool. "Nothing could stop the smug bastard from winning again now. Nothing short of murder."
In Flanders Fields: Even though bombs were falling around them, someone bludgeoned Mad Maggie to death and she wasn't discovered until several days later when the milkman found her.
The Duke’s Wife: The Duke announces that he is going to marry Isabella, a young woman who was going to join a convent.
Going Back: Inspector Banks takes a trip back home to celebrate his parents' Golden Anniversary and sees "how evil can wear many disguises."

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of the publisher/author.
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As a big Inspector Banks fan I approached this book with a little trepidation. Peter Robinson however has written some excellent stories, the majority with a real edge. The Inspector Banks novella was definitely worth waiting for with Banks revisiting his youth. He discovered girls in 1967, the same year as me and listened to the same music, watched the same films and was part of the same exciting times. He weaved a clever little story which probably wouldn't mean a lot to non-fans but I loved it

Not Safe After Dark and Other Works is a collection of short stories and one novella by Peter Robinson, best known for his Inspector Alan Banks series. This collection, from 2004, includes 3 Banks short stories and a final, 100-page novella featuring that character; the other 16 stories are stand-alone ones. There is a lot of variety here, from a 19th-Century duchess in Vienna to an unlikely romance in 1968 Paris, to a private eye working during his vacation in Florida, to WWII London, among many other locales and characters. All except the final novella have been published before in various magazines and anthologies, but it's nice to have the whole collection (well, up to 2004, which is when this was published) in one place. Robinson show more is a fine writer, with a good sense of pacing and characterization; I enjoyed each of these stories in its own way, and will happily try a novel in the future. Note: This is not to be confused with an earlier collection, from 1998, entitled Not Safe After Dark and Other Stories. Recommended. show less

I love British mysteries, and I when I first received this book as an ARC from Goodreads--I was excited because I thought I had found a new favorite author. I enjoyed the Inspector Banks stories in the book, but the rest of the stories felt like they were just filler. There was one story, Innocence, that I thought was downright pervy.

This is the first of two short story collections by this author. Albeit it is less successful than the later one,it still has some gems within its pages.
My favourites are 'The Two Ladies of Rose Cottage' and 'In Flanders Fields'. Both of these are unusual and atmospheric stories which are well worth reading.
Most of the others are well written but ordinary,and one or two are so depressing,that one feels that they would have been better left unwritten and unread.

"Not Safe After Dark" is a collection of 20 short stories, three of them Banks stories and one of them a novella. Some of the stories were good and a few were better. The story I liked the best was 'Carrion'. Took me in, hook, line and sinker. The novella I had read as a stand alone story and it was also included in another short story collection. Gave it three stars.