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33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Here's to you Mr. Robinson!, October 20, 2001
"Aftermath" is the most recent entry in the British police procedural featuring Superintendent Alan Banks. For those of you who have followed this series, you are in for quite a surprise. Peter Robinson has done what very few authors of a series have been able to accomplish. He has taken a very popular series of books that were on the cozy side and with each succeeding book made the stories deeper and more meaningful and the characters richer and more complex. With this book, he has passed over from the rather mild British police procedural into the realm of Val McDermid land. In a brutally graphic manner, Mr. Robinson tells his story about a serial rapist and murderer while exploring child abuse, sexual exploitation, espousal abuse and the very dark side of the human psyche. Along the way, Mr. Robinson adds more layers to the straight forward Alan Banks we met in the earlier books. We have come to discover that this is a complicated man who is in conflict about his broken marriage and the demands of his job. Mr. Robinson has paid the same attention to each character in this book, creating a rich and multi-dimensional cast of players. One can only applaud him for taking this series in a totally new direction. I imagine it is not that easy for an author to fiddle with a wildly popular series. Mr. Robinson took that chance and we, the readers, are the beneficiaries of his willingness to explore new vistas.
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another stunning novel by the inimitable Peter Robinson., October 20, 2001
I have run out of superlatives to describe Peter Robinson, who is arguably one of the finest writers of British police procedurals, on par with P. D. James and Ruth Rendell at their best. I have read ten out of the eleven Inspector Banks novels that Robinson has written over the years, and I have enjoyed most of them immensely. In Robinson's latest novel, "Aftermath," Alan Banks is Acting Detective Superintendent in Yorkshire, substituting for his ailing boss. Banks is depressed and on the verge of career burnout. He smokes and drinks too much, he gets too little sleep, and he is overwhelmed by the demands of his job. In addition, his love affair with Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot is not going well. Banks is still grieving over his separation from Sandra, his wife of twenty years, and he has little time or energy to invest in social relationships. Banks's life soon goes from bad to worse. He is caught up in the case of the Chameleon killer, a man who abducts and murders teenaged girls. The case appears to be solved when two detective constables respond to a call about a domestic disturbance. The constables open the door, only to find a house of horrors, and they discover the identity of the man who appears to be the Chameleon killer. Those of us who know Peter Robinson quickly realize that the case is just beginning. Who is Terence Payne, the biology teacher who apparently abducted, raped and murdered the young girls? What role, if any, did Terence's wife, Lucy, play in her husband's heinous crimes? Was Lucy a victim of spousal abuse herself, too frightened to tell the police what her husband was up to, or is she hiding something about her own shadowy past? As usual, Robinson creates a large cast of fascinating and believable characters, such as Maggie Forrest, a domestic abuse survivor who champions the cause of Lucy Payne, and Police Constable Janet Taylor, who stands accused of using excessive force while subduing Terence Payne. Robinson brilliantly explores the theme that police officers who invest themselves in their jobs pay a huge emotional and physical price. He also studies the ways in which people handle personal crises and traumas, and the devastating effects of violence on people's lives. With brilliant psychological insight, an unerring ear for dialogue, clever plotting and compassion for the human condition, Robinson has written a breathtaking novel of suspense. I recommend "Aftermath" unreservedly.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Realistic, but entertaining., March 20, 2002
Robinson does a fabulous job of combining some of the realistic details of violent crime, and police work, along with making the story an entertaining read. There is a fine line between the technical details of crime and police work, on the one hand, and the entertaining, readable story-telling on the other, but this author knows exactly how to handle this line, and "Aftermath" is a masterpiece of combining the 2 facets of crime-writing. This book contains a few necessary "dirty" details, but no more than is required for this story. Anyone who complains about too much detail of blood, vicious and depraved motives, and twisted personalities have no concept of what is present in genuine crime and the shocks real police officers encounter. The author touches on, and explores a bit, the very complex questions of the level of responsibility of a woman involved in a bloody crime along with her male partner. The fact that he doesn't present some veneer-thin explanation, that might be easy to understand, shows his understanding of the difficulty of explaining and categorizing some of these relationships. Robinson has said this novel wasn't based on the infamous Bernardo-Homolka case in Ontario, but there are some very parallel facts present, and we should give credit for some inspiration from a very real, and more horrific, case than his work here could convey. Here is a work that is thought-provoking, realistic and quite
entertaining. Most highly recommended.
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