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Chief Inspector Alan Banks finds himself up against a diabolical arsonist in this electrifying novel of suspense from New York Times bestselling author Peter Robinson. In the early hours of the morning, a man reports a fire on two old canal boats. One of the firefighters notices the use of accelerant at the scene and calls the police, but by the time Inspector Banks arrives, the fire brigade have put out the flames and only the smoldering wreckage remains. A body has been found on each barge, and all the evidence points towards a deliberate arson attack. One of the victims is Tina, a young girl with a drug addiction and a terrible past who had been living with her boyfriend Mark. The other is Tom, an artist who had been living alone. Now, with little evidence to go on and a number of possible suspects, including Tina's boyfriend, the local 'lock-keeper' who reported the fire, and Tina's own father, Banks must begin to delve into the lives of the victims, and to discover who could have wanted them out of the way forever...From the master of psychological suspense, Peter Robinson, comes a mind-bending thriller of secrets and murder.… (more)
User reviews
It’s not every policeman who can quote from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra while surveying the carnage wrought by fire. Then again, not every policeman is Inspector Alan Banks.
Playing With Fire, the fourteenth
Luckily, Robinson is not yet ready to rest on his laurels. The multiple-award winning author has had the good fortune to be allowed the opportunity to improve over time, evolving the Banks mysteries from their admittedly minor beginnings to their current regard as distinguished police procedurals. Playing With Fire, a superior example of its kind, takes the reader for a suspenseful ride through red herrings and dead ends, escorted by the estimable talents of Inspector Banks and the spare prose and technical grace of Peter Robinson.
As the tale begins, Banks is just arriving on the scene. The bodies of a young junkie and a reclusive artist have been discovered in the burnt-out ruins of two dilapidated barges. Banks, along with partner Annie Cabbot, suspects arson, yet a reason for the destruction of two seemingly lost souls is nowhere to be found. Over the course of 350 pages, suspects and motives emerge and evaporate, leading Banks into an intricate web of paedophilia, drugs, and forgers.
As in all truly good mysteries, the mystery itself is secondary to the overall atmosphere of the piece, supplied in large part by locale and character. Banks’s stomping ground of Yorkshire, England, is an inspired choice, at once familiar yet invitingly foreign. Robinson adeptly captures the nuance of local language and colour, creating an intriguing landscape of class warfare and criminal underworld, which Banks adroitly manoeuvres through.
Like contemporaries such as Ian Rankin and John Harvey, Robinson also understands that without compelling characters, the readers won’t return. Banks shares the rarefied company of Rankin’s Inspector Rebus and Harvey’s under-appreciated Charlie Resnick, police officers with rich, believable personal lives to compliment their professional accomplishments. Even minor and secondary characters are given moments to shine (especially suspect Mark Siddons and DC Winsome Jackman),each abundant in human frailties and passion, making the novel just that much more vibrant.
However, where Rankin and Harvey fully transcend the genre, Robinson’s latest effort falls just shy. For all the sterling dialogue, finely hued characterizations, and in-depth procedural investigation, there remains something decidedly clunky in Robinson’s narrative. While by no means boring, the convolutions of the plot occasionally stretch credibility, with one major plot twist that would be far more at home in the absurd, low-rent soap opera ‘thrillers’ of James Patterson than in Robinson’s undeniably superior efforts.
Playing With Fire is still a crackling good read, a hearty dose of grisly remains and harried detectives that keeps the reader guessing until the very last page. In an often-maligned category of literature, Robinson reminds us that good writing is good writing, no matter the genre.
As the previous reviewers had said, this is a story of murders and fires. The details of fire forensics is fascinating as it is. The tale that Robinsons weaves in the telling of the story is equal to the technical details. In addition, the two characters:Banks and Annie Cabbot have come to a point in their evolution within these books to become very interesting and conflicted people. They are quite flawed, as are we all, but they do their jobs and they do it well despite their flaws, as do we all.
Robinson allows us a peak at Banks relationship with his ex-wife, which is prickly to say the least. Annie's new beau, too perfect ot be true. And Bank's new flame, another flawed human being. And Annie and Bank's feelings toward each other and the new people in their lives. This sounds sort of like Peyton Place, but Robinsons does a careful job of keeping it separated from the main mystery narrotive, throwing the complications in to either move the narrative along or to slow it down so the reader can breathe. All in all, he is quite successful.
I am now eager to read the next story, just to see if Peter Robinson is slipping or whether I am getting better at reading his work.
I would recommend this series to anyone.
I'm not sure if I've read Peter Robinson before. Probably I have, he's prolific and my wife likes Inspector Banks. I bought Playing with Fire together with Strange Affair and Not Safe After Dark from the Book People for 5 the lot.
Inspector Banks is unable to cross the room without receiving a character building flashback from every biscuit crumb, cup of tea, pint of bitter, shot of Laphroaig cask strength. When not puffing his character to bursting point the author is giving a running commentary on every piece of music that Banks is listening to in the house, car, his head, it goes on and on. I thought the characters were adequately painted after a couple of chapters but it didn't stop. This looks like the work of an author who has sacrificed proliferation for quality. If Robinson did, in fact, write this book himself then it may be an indication of what his early drafts are like before the over-detail edit. 445 pages here is probably 300 if the job had been finished.
Nevertheless, still have the other two to read to ensure fairness. Perhaps it was a hiccup in his output....as he raised the blue French rustic china mug with a chip on the side that would be mouthwards if he was left handed, which he wasn't, and inhaled the heady aroma of Laphroaig cask strength taken straight, no ice, he was reminded of the smell of the burnt bodies in the charred but rusty hulls of the narrowboats that the moneyed semi-aristocratic owner had forgotten, or even didn't care that, he owned. Perhaps the killer had been left handed and left traces of DNA on the chipped surface when he drank from that same mug, thought Banks, reminding him of his left-handed Uncle Freddy who wore vintage yellow Marigold rubber gloves to weddings.... etc.
This latest installment of the Yorkshire DCI Alan Banks chronicles begins with the destruction by fire of two derelict canal barges and the squatters dwelling within. Forensics soon reveal arson, and that the target was one of the barges, occupied by an unsuccessful artist; the casualty in the other barge, junkie Tina, was either just "collateral damage", as the disgusting euphemism has it, or, perhaps worse, was a deliberate piece of misdirection by the arsonist to obscure his motives. Banks and DI Annie Cabbot and their crew -- notably DC Winsome Jackman, with whom I could all too easily fall in love -- soon unravel an art-forgery conspiracy, especially when there's another arson murder just a few days later; but they also, with the aid of innocent bystander Tina's hotheaded wastrel boyfriend Mark (about whom one begins to care inordinately) uncover a nasty backstory for her involving childhood sexual abuse. Robinson's working through of these two plots in parallel is mesmerizing.
Each time I finish one of Robinson's novels I wonder briefly why I don't read them more often, and then almost immediately the answer hits me: they're far too good to waste on a binge. Rather, I need to spread them out and savour them, waiting for le moment juste before I pick up the next one. But what a moment of happiness that moment usually proves to be!