Cold Is the Grave: An Inspector Banks Novel of Suspense

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

Readers who have followed Chief Inspector Alan Banks through the first
10 novels in this outstanding series will know that the Yorkshire
policeman and his wife have separated and that his commanding officer,
Chief Constable Riddle, is the bane of his life. This unpleasantness
finally leads Banks to consider moving back to London, but then he
receives a surprising personal request from Riddle for help. The
latter’s 16-year-old daughter has run away and nude photos of her have
appeared on the Internet. Banks is asked to conduct an unofficial search
outside police channels. This he does at the book’s beginning, and is
soon back investigating the brutal slaying of a local crook. But
complications develop from both incidents, the plot thickens, the
corpses mount, the number of suspects grows, and the engrossed reader
continues to turn the pages. If the denouement seems to involve one too
many coincidences, no matter. Robinson has given us another first-rate
police procedural, tightly written, suspenseful, rich in regional
atmosphere, and further developing the personal life of a likable
protagonist whom we hope to meet again soon.