Customer Reviews

A Dedicated Man

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

When the body of local historian Harry Steadman is found buried beneath a dry-stone wall near the village of Helmthorpe, Chief Inspector Alan Banks finds himself presented with a extremely puzzling case. And why is it puzzling? Because, aside from a minor disagreement with his friend and local farmer over his selling of some lad, Harry was invariably liked y everybody, ad even that minor inconsequential argument was no reason to kill somebody. Harry was a kind, thoughtful, and respected man, whom everyone liked and about whom no one can find a bad word to say. There seems to be absolutely no motive for his murder. And yet, buried somewhere, there must be one

Then, Sally Lumb, a local teenager whom Banks suspects of knowing more than she is telling, alarmingly disappears

Very much an English cosy in the tradition of writers like Ann Granger, this is another success for Peter Robinson. There seems to be nothing exceptionally challenging in these early novels, but theyre very enjoyable reads. Robinson writes good prose, and structures his mysteries excellently. He develops his characters well, even if they themselves are nothing out of the ordinary. Banks is an excellent lead, very real and with a dry humour there is definitely something of Morse in him. But, it would be nice if we got to meet his family a bit more pretty soon

Anyone who likes a nice, traditional, well-crafted and satisfying British mystery is guaranteed to like the books of Peter Robinson.

Peter Robinson is that most rare of mystery writers. He is not satisfied with a corpse, a detective and some clues. Robinson creates a complete world with three-dimensional characters who come alive for the reader. In "A Dedicated Man," the shrewd and dogged Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks investigates the death of Harry Steadman. Harry was a former university professor, a man with no enemies who studied local history for fun. Yet someone hated Harry enough to brutally murder him and dump his body in the Yorkshire dales. For quite a while, Banks is completely stymied. He questions Harry's widow and his small circle of friends, but Banks makes little progress. Only after relentless digging and after the death of a second victim does Banks come up with the solution to the crime. It turns out that Harry's life and those of his friends are not as straightforward and uncomplicated as they had at first seemed. What is wonderful about Robinson is that he makes police work look as tedious and difficult as it really is. It is clear that without relentless and time-consuming detective work on the part of Banks and his colleagues, they would solve few crimes. Robinson, along with Rendell and James, is a superb writer of novels that also happen to be first-rate mysteries.

Second books are often a bit like second musical albums after big debuts. Good, but somehow lacking the magic of the first effort. That's how I feel about "A Dedicated Man". I really debated between giving it three or four stars.

It easily earns three stars as an least average British police procedural. The writing is competent. The clues (or lack thereof) all make sense in in the end. It gets another half star for its many thoughtful observations of the Yorkshire environment - both the landscape and the mentality of the people. I'm pretty much rounding up the score after that. I like Banks and plan to keep reading the series which has received considerable praise in recent years. Still, I haven't found anything so fascinating that I'm going to recommending the book or series to friends---yet.

When Harry Steadman is murdered, Inspector Alan Banks and his officers are called in to find the killer. Because the murdered man was a genial professor, Banks has a great deal of difficulty finding anyone who might be a suspect. Everyone seemed to genuinely like Harry Steadman. When a young girl is murdered because of what she knows, the search intensifies and when the murderer is unmasked, everyone is stunned. The second mystery in Peter Robinson's series features an interesting mystery and an appealing main character.

This is the second in the series set in Yorkshire and featuring DCI Alan Banks, a London refugee just beginning to adapt to Northern ways. The story this time is set in a small community up the valley from the market town of Eastvale, where the police station is located. A retired academic with a mania for industrial archaeology and the inheritance to indulge it has been killed and his body left in a farmer's field. His immediate circle includes a local entrepreneur, an ex-folk singer returned home in disillusion, the local doctor, and another "incomer," an author of mystery novels (which allows Robinson to get in a few tongue-in-cheek digs). But then a teenage girl whose precocity and theatrical ambitions lead her to poke into matters on her own becomes the second victim. Where the first book spent a lot of time on the Chief Inspector's wife and family (necessarily setting the scene and establishing the characters), this one is much more the traditional police procedural, focusing on the murder itself, the suspects, and Banks's tireless efforts to pin the former on one of the latter. The denouement isn't exactly a deus ex machina, but I didn't think the reader received sufficient clues to even begin to logically identify the culprit. Robinson's beautifully orchestrated background narrative about life in rural Yorkshire, however, is worth the price of admission all by itself.

Peter Robinson's "A Dedicated Man" is a thoughtfully constructed murder mystery conducted by Chief Inspector Alan Banks. Banks has fairly recently abandoned the hubbub of London to become situated with family in tow in the small Yorkshire hamlet of Eastvale. His peaceful bucolic existence is shattered upon the discovery of a partially buried male corpse in the fields outside the neighboring village of Gratly.

The victim is identified is ex-university professor Harry Steadman. Steadman whose specialty was industrial archaeology retired from teaching after acquiring a large family inheritance and purchased a house in the countryside town of Gratly. Steadman and his wife Emma had vacationed at the house he bought going back for about ten years. The former owner's son Michael Ramsden now a publisher living in York was a frequent and regular companion of Steadman's in his forays around the countryside to explore local archaeologic sites.

Banks with help from local authorities canvassed the local inhabitants trying to determine Steadman's habits and foibles to uncover the identity of the murderer. Sally Lumb, an attractive 16 year old aspiring actress has taken a particular interest in the crime. Dissatisfied with Banks' efforts she sets out to solve the mystery herself. When during the course of the investigation Sally turns up missing the inquest gets elevated to a much more intense level.

Banks persistently evaluates the scanty clues and probes the psyches of the local suspects until solves the mystery. His solution is both believeable and not entirely unexpected. The means that Banks uses to arrive at the solution are nicely construed by Robinson

This one gets four stars from me, instead of three, for purely sentimental reasons. Several years ago I bought a copy of this book for a buck at a thrift store and thus was introduced to the excellent Alan Banks series by the Yorkshire-born Canadian Peter Robinson.

I recently re-read this one and find it strong on characterization but not as strong as to plot. The murder victim seems such an innocuous, even laudable, person, as we get to know him through Chief Inspector Banks' investigation. But gradually that picture is shaded with less admirable tones, until by the end I harbored the subversive thought, "maybe the world was better off without the selfish sod." However, by then the murderer had also dispatched a real innocent.

In the course of this case Banks explores the secrets, rumors and sometimes claustrophobic social landscape of a village as well as the physical landscape of some Yorkshire dales.

I don't think it's the strongest or best book in the series but I treasure my thrift store copy, which the author kindly autographed for me at a convention a few years ago.

I was scouting around for a new British crime series to start and heard good things about Peter Robinson. So, when I came across this second in the Inspector Banks series, it seemed like fate was telling me to dive in. However, I and my wife both found it a severely disappointing, utterly unimpressive procedural. I can only surmise the series gets better over subsequent volumes, because this is utterly average stuff.

Inspector Banks has recently relocated form London to sleepy rural Yorkshire and is still getting a feel for the lay of the land (following his first case in Gallows View). One day a retired historian turns up dead in a field near the village of Helmthorpe, leaving Banks with an old-fashioned whodunit. Pretty quickly, the stable of suspects is established: his widow (who inherits a nice legacy), his old friend and publisher, his mystery-writing drinking pal, his local GP and drinking pal, a local entrepreneur developer drinking pal, or the local folk singer he may have had a fling with a decade ago?

Like a latter-day Miss Marple, Banks and his plod underlings go back and forth from house to house, interviewing suspects and trying to tease a semblance of motive and opportunity from their statements. Of course, like the old-fashioned constructions of Christie, we are left with lots of semi-plausible motives and seemingly few opportunities. Banks is convinced the answer lies in a fateful summer ten years ago. Meanwhile, a local teenage girl brags about seeing something the night of the murder, placing herself in danger. Will Banks be able to get to the bottom of things before the killer strikes again?!?!?

It's all pretty bland stuff, and gimmick by which the murderer masks themselves is a bit of a groaner. The clues dovetail nicely, and Robinson's done a capable job of constructing a puzzler, but the story and characters are instantly forgettable. The writing is utterly without style or distinction and the Yorkshire setting never really came alive for me. It seemed a kind of generic green and pastoral land with insular people and cure stone cottages. All in all, very little to recommend here.

I have read books from later in the `Alan Banks' series, so I already know what happens to the character in his personal life, although this does not detract in any way from my enjoyment in back-tracking a little, in this, the second book in the series.

Peter Robinson is still establishing the character and his family, fleshing them out, to give them a life of their own. They are becoming totally believable, not too exuberant or larger than life, as they strive to fit into their new home and community in the Yorkshire dales, after the hustle and bustle of life in London.

Banks is coming to like his new found peace and quiet, mentally leaving the investigation for short periods, to share his random thoughts and to wax lyrical in his very vivid and real descriptions, of his adopted Yorkshire Dales.

Much of the investigation seems to take place in or around various public houses and involves quite a large intake of both alcohol and tobacco, with much of the time in between spent driving between remote locations in the Dales, to the accompaniment of his latest interest, folk music. I found this flawed side to his character quite endearing and in keeping with the whols ethos of this intimate community, although I did have more than a passing thought that the similarity of the character with that of Colin Dexter's character of `Morse', was quite uncanny in many instances, although of course Morse had his musical tastes firmly rooted in the Classical genre.

In fact, all of the characters in the story are well developed and believable, in their individual roles, within this tightknit community. Banks is still treated as something of an outsider, with the locals reluctant to talk to, or confide in him, despite the fact that everyone knows everyone else and everyone has an opinion to share. As is so often the case in smaller communities however, they are so busy minding everyone else's business, that they have been caught unawares and are blissfully ignorant about the identity of the murderer in their midst.

The plot isn't hurried along, which is a little unfortunate for Banks, who subsequently and very emotionally for him personally, has two crimes on his hands. We now get to go beyond that bluff exterior and see the softer side to his personality, as he strives to come to terms with his own shortcomings in the investigation, in this often reflective study of human nature.

Banks is a man of great tenacity in his ability to solve a crime, despite the many false leads and intricate sub-plots, that stand in his way and following his thought processes and powers of deduction was quite interesting, changing my mind about the identity of the person he was seeking out several times and keeping me guessing right until the end.

This book was nothing less than the quality of writing and levels of suspense, that I have come to expect from Peter Robinson and personally, I would highly recommend it, if you are in the market for a great crime fiction read.

Published in 1988, A Dedicated Man shows off the classic Robinson murder writing. Alan Banks is newly ensconced in his role as Chief Inspector in the smaller Northern area of Swainsdale, having just left London. This is the second book by Robinson and shows marked improvement over "Gallows View", his first book.

The clues are laid out before the reader as Banks receives them, but small nuances play an important role in this story. Robinson writes with clarity and succinctly develops the plot into quite a nice murder yarn. Any fan of the more recent books by Peter Robinson, should try to find this one and backfill on the earlier character.

While Banks doesn't yet show his dark side and the moodiness that is to come, it was enjoyable to see Inspector Banks before he becomes the brooding, introspective, dark, and rebellious character we have come to love.