Standing in the Shadows: The last novel in the number one bestselling Alan Banks crime series

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I want to thank NetGalley and William Morrow for forwarding to me a copy of this wonderful book for me to read, enjoy and review. The opinions expressed in this review are solely my own. The police do a stellar job of identifying the corpse. They discover that the dead man was a fit 50/60-something with a penchant for high-end threads. He was buried in a Tom Ford suit (think Daniel Craig in his first Bond films) and bespoke leather shoes. They release a sketch to the media, but no one steps up to identify the missing man. Eventually the two cases intersect and the outcome was a surprise to me ... I thought I had it figured out! This one is, sadly,the last one there will ever be,and it´s more of the same. It drags a lot,the dual timelines contribute nothing and what starts as a puzzle turns into unbelievable scenarios.

I am a first-time reader of acclaimed author Peter Robinson’s DCI Alan Banks police procedurals! I know, I know. Imagine coming into the series at #28 … cheeky, right?! No, I haven’t even seen the TV adaptations, either. An honest-to-goodness newbie.

Robinson approaches his characters with immense compassion.”— New York Times Book Review on Many Rivers to Cross The book itself was a 4 Star but I give 5 stars for the whole series, now sadly ended as the author passed away last year. It will always be my favorite police procedural series with the best dialogue in that genre. The characters always felt like real people, even the tertiary ones. At one point I might even reread the series just to spend time with those characters again ( I might skip Zelda chapters though…)

The twenty-eighth installment of the #1 bestselling Inspector Banks series by "the grand master of the genre" ( Literary Review), Peter Robinson. This final book was especially welcome, positioned as it is before, or in between, dramatic entanglements with Annie (and others). Mr. Robinson has always been consistent with his characterizations of Banks and his team. He paints them brilliantly. The reader feels like they are old friends and gets to witness their conversations and actions. I’ve truly enjoyed getting to know them all.This series continues to be as thoughtful and intelligent as ever, with the usual bonus of the magnificent Dales * Observer * The coroner establishes that death came through the aegis of some hard blows to the skull. After the turbulence of the past few years, which culminated in the events of Not Dark Yet , Banks welcomes an outwardly straightforward investigation. In his off hours, he’s diligently working his way through the LP collection left to him by his friend Ray Cabbot. He was born in Castleford, West Yorkshire, to Clifford Robinson, a rent collector, and Miriam (nee Jarvis), a cleaner, and grew up in Armley, a working-class suburb of Leeds (also home to fellow writers Alan Bennett and Barbara Taylor Bradford). It is not too much of a stretch to assume that aspects of Inspector Banks’s adolescence in the 1960s, as described in Close to Home (2003), the 14th novel in the series, mirrored Robinson’s own.

Peter Robinson was born in Yorkshire. After getting his BA Honours Degree in English Literature at the University of Leeds, he came to Canada and took his MA in English and Creative Writing at the University of Windsor, with Joyce Carol Oates as his tutor, then a PhD in English at York University. He has taught at a number of Toronto community colleges and universities and served as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Windsor, 1992-93. He described in one interview how he spent the lively summer of 1965 “with his ear glued to his transistor radio and his eyes on the passing girls”. He went to Leeds University to study English literature. While there he wrote poetry and gave public readings around Yorkshire. That’s right. 2008. ‘Lost their moral compass,’ according to one of them. As if they ever had one.” Robinson pulls the reader in with deft characterizations, powerfully understated action scenes, and strong locales . . . A s trong addition to the Banks series that suggests tantalizing possibilities for the next installment * Kirkus *Late November 2019. An dig near Scotch Corner unearths a skeleton that turns out to be far more recent than the Roman remains the archaeologist is looking for. Detective Superintendent Alan Banks and his team are called in and, as an investigation into the find begins, the past and the present meet with devastating consequences. Robinson fans will enjoy the latest entry in this long-running series. First-time readers will be motivated to seek out the previous titles. Well-written and believable, with recognizable but multifaceted characters and enough twists to keep the story riveting until the mystery is solved.”— Library Journal on Careless Love Decades later, in November 2019, an archaeologist unearths a skeleton that turns out to be far more contemporary than the Roman remains she is seeking. Detective Superintendent Alan Banks and his team are called in to investigate, but there is little to be gleaned from the remains themselves. Left with few clues, Banks and his team must rely on their wits to hunt down a killer. The 28th and the last in series, not because the series is getting stale, but because this amazing author has passed. In fact, many of my favored authors seem to be moving on to, well who knows, but they are leaving a hole in my heart and my future reading plans. After writing so many books, I felt connected to Robinson, as I have to his character Alan Banks. The final Inspector Banks novel, Standing in the Shadows, will be released on April 11, 2023 in the US, on May 16, 2023 in Canada, and on June 8, 2023, in the UK.