Customer Reviews

A Necessary End

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The quiet town of Eastvale in Yorkshire is rocked by an anti-nuclear demonstration that turns violent. A police constable named Edwin Gill is stabbed to death during the demonstration and Inspector Alan Banks is on the case. Unfortunately, his superior is not the supportive and sensible Superintendent Gristhorpe but "Dirty Dick" Burgess, a sadistic, chauvanistic, hard-drinking CID Superintendent who has a hatred for "commies" and hippie-types. Burgess roars into town and immediately starts threatening the locals, using his bullying style of interrogation to get results.

With Sandra and the kids out of town for a few weeks, Banks has plenty of time to follow a few leads of his own. Most of his suspicions are centered around a commune known as "Maggie's Farm," where some sixties-type people live together. One of the residents, Paul Boyd, is a particularly suspicious character, since he has a lengthy police record. Banks wants to find out if Officer Gill was murdered deliberately or if his killing was merely a random act of violence.

"A Necessary End" is not notable for being a scintillating mystery. The resolution of the story is a bit anti-climactic. What Robinson does well is develop character. From the brutal Dick Burgess to the gentle and loving Mara (who lives in the commune), each character comes alive as a result of Robinson's vivid descriptive writing and realistic dialogue. I recommend "A Necessary End". It is a well-paced novel that is also filled with colorful and authentic Yorkshire atmosphere.

Banks is one of the more enjoyable fictional detectives because he's a whole person who can't be categorized. The same can be said of the other characters in this readable and satisfying book that, among other things, suggests that you can't tell a person by his politics.

Example: Inspector Burgess, the mean and sometimes mean-spirited visitor from London suspects reds under every bed, left-wing conspiracies behind everything and yet ... likes Billie Holiday. Osmond, who seems a knee-jerk left-winger, talks about the way all anti-nuclear people are presumed to be on the same page on every subject. They're not, he notes, pointing to the anti-abortion position of some left-wing Catholics.

All of this humanizes an interesting detective story. Robinson, who seems to have come to notice in "In A Dry Season'' is up there with the best of the mystery writers and this book is up there with his best.

When a demonstration goes out of control, many demonstrators and policemen are left wounded and one constable is found stabbed to death. With over 100 demonstrators, Inspector Banks has his work cut out for him. We meet Jenny Fuller, the psychologist, again, though this time not in a professional capacity. She is dating one of the many suspects of the crime. Is this a crime of passion? Or is it a more sinister premeditated murder using the demonstration as a facade? Banks deals with a number of a fleshed out characters which the reader will quickly empathize with. It is page turner and true to the police procedural form.

A well-plotted police procedural mystery with several interesting characters, not the least of which is Superintendent Dirty Dick Burgess. What a piece of work this guy is! This chap alone is worth the cost of the book. And we all know someone like him: callous, mean, racist, sexist, insists that others abide by the very rules that he gleefully violates. And Inspector Banks has the pleasure of working with this guy in order to find out who stabbed a police officer to death during an anti-nuke rally. Banks deserves a promotion!

This third outing for DCI Banks of Eastvale in north Yorkshire includes a generally well thought out plot, though the clues to the reader are a bit thin -- but it's the characters who really stand out. There's a small anti-nuclear demonstration on the town square which turns into a brawl when the police attack the demonstrators and one of the out-of-town cops is knifed. For political reasons, a special investigator is sent up from London -- a right-wing bully-boy named Brewster interested only in fitting up one of the local anti-government politicals for the murder rather than actually solving the crime. He outranks Banks, who is forced to go along with his illegal methods, at least for awhile. Most of the suspicion centers on a communal farmstead where half a dozen artistic activists live and work, and the reader is given plenty of reason to suspect most of them at one point or another. The actual (anticlimatic) solution, however, involves bringing in a new character and new information in the last chapter, which isn't quite playing fair, is it? I really enjoy Robinson's style, though, and the fact that Banks is a very human (and generally humane) person. Though the loathsome Burgess is probably more typical as a cop. (It's also obvious that Robinson has never had to deal with white cops in the American South, who could make Burgess look like a saint.) My only other complaint is that the author makes rather too much, and in an annoyingly detailed way, of Banks taste for American blues music.

This book, dealing with the death of a policeman at a demonstration, was an excellent read. All characters are portrayed in depth and the mystery is difficult to figure out. The end is plausible - almost realistic. The plotting is done with care and the author pays attention to details. This book is entertaining, puzzling and intriguing.

The Inspector Banks series is a good one, and this third in the series is as good as the other two that I have read. In this book a police constable is killed in an anti-nuclear demonstration in Banks' town of Eastvale. Was the murder just a result of hot tempers in the heat of the moment, or was there something more planned and more sinister here? Banks needs to find out, but before he can do much investigating an old acquaintance from the London PD is sent to help. Banks knows that Dirty Dick lives up to his name, and finds that he has to continue investigating on his own in order to get to the real reason behind the killing. Robinson is an excellent writer whose characters are real and three-dimensional. I love Inspector Banks, and can't wait to continue to read this series.

This book, though one of Robinson's early works, succeeds nicely. In sleuthing the murder of a policeman at an anti-nuke rally, the author probes the venalities of both the cops and the protestor community. This is a typical Robinson procedural, leavened nicely by the presence of a Scotland Yard hotshot sent up to Yorkshire to solve the crime. Superintendent Burgess becomes one of Robinson's more interesting characters and the interplay between this freewheeler and the more restrained Chief Inspector Banks adds nicely to the book. In this book, it's the well-drawn characters which win the day, not the plot which is fairly mundane. All in all, in this and all his books, Peter Robinson distinguishes himself as one of the best police procedural writers out there. This is a very enjoyable read.

This is one of the earlier Alan Banks books, in which the music-loving police inspector's marriage is still going well, but as usual, the focus is on the case: the murder of another policeman who had been "keeping the peace"--but actually stirring up violence--at an anti-nuke demonstration. Even northern Yorkshire has its hippie types, and the inspector does his usual smart and subtle work despite the usual evasions and lies and his own coworkers (particularly Dirty Dick, a heavy-handed detective from London). A good read with no easy answers and a satisfying finish.

Peter Robinson grew up in Yorkshire, and is the author of a number of previous novels featuring Inspector Banks. He is the winner of numerous awards in the United States, Britain and Canada, and in 2002 he won the CWA Dagger in the Library. As I also come from Leeds the background to his stories is something that I have experienced first hand and because of this I have a special affection for his books. However they would be first class crime fiction wherever they were based.

Ironically as usually happens with anti nuclear demonstrations and marches for peace etc. violence breaks out at a demonstration in Eastvale and ends with serious consequences, a police office is stabbed to death. Because of the nature of the crime and where it took place there are literally over a hundred initial suspects, but then these are narrowed down to the people who live at a place called "Maggie's Farm" an isolated house high up in the dale.

Among the suspects is a social worker, Dennis Osmond who is involved with Jenny Fuller, a friend of Inspector Banks. If this isn't a large enough problem for Banks he finds out than an old enemy of his, Detective Superintendent Burgess is to head the investigation. Finally, warned off the case the only way that Banks can achieve any respectability and salvage his career is by finding the killer before Burgess does . . .