The Summer That Never Was
British crime writer Peter Robinson has really grown on me. I’ve just finished his 13th Inspector Banks mystery, The Summer That Never Was, and came away with a feeling of total respect for Robinson’s literary talent.
I know I expressed mixed views after my first Banks experience, In A Dry Season, but that was based mainly on what I saw then as a preoccupation with the detective’s personal life at the expense of drama and narrative.
I now consider that if I had started this series chronologically, I wouldn’t have had the same concern. Part of the appeal for me now is following the ups and downs of Banks the man.
He’s a copper with compassion. Obsessed by work, his family life suffers and this becomes a central conflict in each novel to varying degrees.
The Summer That Never Was follows two parallel but unrelated cases involving the suspicious deaths of two teenage boys.
Graham Marshall was a boyhood friend of Banks, who partly blamed himself for not reporting to police an attack he narrowly escaped. Graham’s bones are dug up from a construction site and the case is re-opened.
Banks comes to learn, with relief, that his own attacker was an escaped lunatic and couldn’t possibly have killed Graham Marshall because he was dead when the boy disappeared.
Banks helps a local detective in Peterborough, Michelle Hart, to solve the puzzle.
Meanwhile, back in his home town of Eastvale, the highly strung son of a celebrity couple went missing and his body was later found in a remote dam.
Banks plays a support role for DI Annie Cabot in solving this mystery.
What I liked about this book, compared with others in the series, was that Robinson gave readers two cases to follow, with numerous sub-plots in both of them, along with the ongoing saga of Banks the private man.
He did this with skill and aplomb.
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