Customer Reviews

In a Dry Season

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is just a small departure from the normal Detective Banks format, but Peter Robinson is a gem when it comes to British murder mysteries. His books just keep getting better, and this book is so beautifully crafted that you are drawn into the story and wonderful characters. Each Inspector Banks book moves us further into his life and ties us closer to his very believable characters.This book takes a short detour into the past with a wonderfully creditable portrayal of wartime England, while moving the reader subltly along in Bank's life. Incredibly good read, stayed up all night to finish it. Peter Robinson sets new standards for British police proceedurals. Can hardly wait until the next one! I strongly recommend that you read absolutely every Inspector Banks mystery you can lay your hands on!!

A village that has been flooded to create a reservoir is uncovered during a particularly dry summer. While exploring, a boy discovers a human skeleton that, in all likelihood had been put there over 50 years ago. Was the person murdered or was it an accident? Will it be possible to solve such an old case?

The man chosen for the job is DI Alan Banks. He's been out of favour with his superiors, prompting his selection for what sees to be a hopeless, dead-end job. But, through determination, perseverance and help from local sergeant, Annie Cabbot, he makes slow progress.

Peter Robinson alternates between the present and the past in an effective narration of the story. By doing this, we are treated to both the lead up and the aftermath of a time surround by turmoil. As Inspector Banks uncovers clues and chases up leads, we are taken back to when it all took place and get to witness every detail first hand. It really is a technique that works extraordinarily well.

As far as police procedurals go, this ranks very highly with pieces of the puzzle revealing a more and more tragic story, leading right up to the consequences played out in the climactic present-day scenes. This is definitely a book to put on your must-read list, particularly if you are a fan of well-constructed mysteries.

He already thought that he had sunk to the bottom after his marriage ended and he was relegated to desk duty due to one insubordination too many. So when his superior assigns him to investigate human remains found in the remote Thornfield Reservoir, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks jumps on the case.

Even before he travels to the reservoir, Alan knows that the extra dry season led to the bones being discovered as the water no longer covered them. The forensic crowd determine that the victim is Gloria Shackleton, a Land Girl who worked in the village of Hobb's End during World War II. Just after the war, a reservoir was built on the site of the village. Though someone murdered Gloria five decades ago, Alan investigates the crime as if it happened yesterday.

IN A DRY SEASON, the tenth Inspector Banks police procedural, may be the best tale in the highly regarded series. The story line is filled with details from the past and the present that cleverly intertwine into a wonderful investigation. Alan's marital and job problems provide much insight into his character. The support cast, especially the deceased's sister-in-law, augments the plot with much depth from two eras. There may be a drought in Yorkshire, but there is no literary one as long as Peter Robinson continues to provide readers with novels that the audience can bank on as being superb.

Harriet Klausner

I'm always delighted to find a great writer who is new to me. I couldn't put this book down from the first page. Fair warning, however: there isn't a great deal of mystery here. You figure out what's going on pretty soon. However, like the best novels of Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell), this book is not so much about what happened as it is about the characters. Peter Robinson absolutely shines at creating characters that you really care about. It is the unfolding of these characters and the vivid representation of Yorkshire in the 1940s that make this book one of the most interesting I have read in recent years. I highly recommend this book, and can't wait to read his others.

In a Dry Season by Peter Robinson Viking 1999

I have been a fan of Peter Robinson and his protagonist Alan Banks from the beginning and this book is one of the best I have read so far. When a dry season empties a reservoir and exposes the remains of a 50 year-old village, a young boy discovers a skeleton, an apparent a murder victim from the wartime. Banks and local detective Sargent, Annie Cabbot, begin to untangle the relationships of old and in a beautiful recreation of that time of blackout lights and Glenn Miller in the diary of a contemporary of the murder victim, the secret lives and lusts of the old village and its inhabitants. The two stories, the diary and the present investigation, flow contiguously and powerfully, drawing the reader along at a furious pace. The clues a subtle and the ending somewhat of a surprise.

Bank's marriage has fallen apart and as he struggles with the changes in his life and those of his children, Robinson presents a very credible sub plot. The falling into bed with Annie and the resulting shift in their perceptions of each other is brilliantly written and quite believable. The last book I read nearly this good was also by Peter Robinson. Highly recommended to all mystery fans.

This is a key book in the Banks series. Robinson seems to shift away from his reliance on British trivia as we see in prior novels and he has given the novel a strong set of characters. Also, he introduces a police woman, Annie, which makes the story a lot more interesting. Robinson has written almost 20 novels, this is approximately #13, written about 10 years after the first and we see some progress in the complexity of the work. This is one of his best.

As a side note, the present book is available from Pan as ISBN 0330 43265 6 which is two novels in one book, i.e.: In a Dry Season and Dry Bones That Dream. That is a great value since you get two Peter Robinson novels for the price of one.

I have read seven novels in the Inspector Banks series of the near 20 Robinson novels in print. I liked most of the other novels but some are not great while a few are very good. My impression here is that In A Dry Season is probably his best, or among the best. It rates 4 or 5 stars. It is a solid 500 page effort and has good characters and an interesting plot. It is well balanced and has a good story that keeps the reader entertained. Robinson injects humour at all the right spots, and the crime remains a mystery until the end. It is a quick light read. It has some flaws but they are minor.

A flaw in the Banks series, especially some of the early novels, is that Robinson relies on a lot of British pub trivia to set the mood. That cannot sustain a series. That is present here but thankfully in small doses. Robinson seems to have graduated from that - at least partially - and now uses a strong set of characters to carry the novel, and this is a big improvement for the Banks series. He still has Banks quoting T.S. Eliot, but at least that sort of thing does not dominate the book. The introduction of Annie to boost the series was a brilliant move by Robinson.

Annie is an interesting and attractive fellow police officer. As it turns out she becomes Banks's lover. Robinson has many other interesting characters to fill in the pages including an attractive potential victim, a young blond named Gloria, an older male eccentric artist who paints a nude of Gloria, and a female fictional crime writer, who is somewhat similar to Robinson. Also, there are many interesting second and third level characters.

I have been reading a number of the Banks novels and also recommend some of the Detective Wallander series by Henning Mankell. Mankell has less trivia padding and more action. He has nine novels in the series and I read seven. The stories are set in southern Sweden near Malmo-Copenhagen. I recommend these two 5 star novels by Mankell: "One Step Behind" and "Faceless Killers."

This present Banks novel is good to excellent and worth 4 to 5 stars. It is not a classic but it is good and has very interesting characters and lots of human emotion.

Peter Robinson's "In a Dry Season" is a splendid novel. Although this book is a mystery, Robinson does much more than write an entertaining whodunit. He does what the top-notch British mystery writers do. He develops his characters, settings and time periods precisely, and he shows an understanding of what makes people act in a certain way. "In a Dry Season" features Alan Banks, a Detective Chief Inspector restricted to desk duty after a falling out with his superior. Banks is separated from his wife of twenty years, and he is having difficulty with his rebellious son. Suddenly, a new case is thrown into his lap. Banks is asked to solve the mystery of a long-buried skeleton that is unearthed by accident in a dried-up reservoir. Who was this person whose bones lay buried for more than fifty years? Why was he/she killed? Banks discovers that this case stirs his interest and curiosity and he is back in the hunt, eager to flex his mind and his excellent instincts. Like so many other sleuths in British detective novels, Banks is a flawed individual but a superb detective. As the novel unfolds, partly in flashback, the reader is drawn into the life of the murder victim as well as into the life of Banks, for whom this new case is a chance to vindicate himself. As a detective story, "In a Dry Season" is riveting, and I recommend it highly. It is in the tradition of the best novels of Ruth Rendell, P. D. James and Elizabeth George.

I love mysteries and also enjoy books that paint a vivid picture of a time and place. Peter Robinson does both in this entertaining book. His description of the countryside of the UK during the World War II was wonderful. Also his description of the trip to London is great.

Inspector Banks is an interesting character. I have read a previous book that was early in the series when he was happily married. The only real suggestion is to read these books in order because it is hard to understand Banks out of order.

This is such a good book it really did not matter that the murderer's identity was not very important.

I read a New York Times Book review of a latter Inspector Banks mystery and decided to investigate the series.

I haphazardously picked In A Dry Season to read and boy did I get lucky. The plot is complex and the details are engrossing. The literary device used in this particular story is quite effective and it caught the reaqders up on the details of the story. I especially found the Yorkshire related details endearing since I had spent a number of weeks in Yorkshire for work. The place names and the attitudes portrayed in the book is spot on of how I remembered Yorkshire people. His use of musical history is also a great vehicle to pull the interested reader in. Since music is so very important for those of us who are in this generation, this small hook digs deeply into the rader's psyche.

I found the pacing taut and engrossing, the character studies involving. I liked the characters, which is more than half the battle when a story is being told. I have since read Close to the Grave too. In fact I read it in one day, so I gess Peter Robinson has hooked me. I am thiking that I will be finishing the rest of the Inspector Banks books some time soon.

Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks is the kind of man it is easy to like. He is a wounded man, straight from a divorce that he did not want, strained relationship with his two children, and not looked at kindly by his superiors. How can he go wrong? Not much further for him to go down. Here he is on a day off, just finished painting his living room when he receives a call from Chief Constable Jeremy Riddle. Riddle had put Banks career in Siberia. But, now it seems, he has a job for him to do. A skeleton has been found in a small town and Riddle wants Banks there, now.

Years ago a village, Hobb's End, lay under the present Thornfield Reservoir. The reservoir had gone dry in this summer season and bones had been found. Thus starts a mystery that will take all of Banks skill and persistence. This story is presented in a seamless weaving of the past and present. Characters that lived in that small town come alive. And, the present is quite a story in itself. Banks meets Detective Sergeant Annie Cabbot who is part of the investigative team. They are attracted and the inevitable happens. Both of them have histories that cause them to be wary, but there is a strong bond and besides lovers they become friends.

The mystery deepens as the characters come forth from the past. Gloria, the beautiful blond bombshell, either loved or hated by most in town and married to Michael who has the best chance of making something of himself. Gwen, Michael's sister and Michael Stanhope the artist and painter. Young American servicemen who come and go. The skeleton turns out to be the remains of Gloria. She was murdered and now the hunt for the murderer goes on. Banks and Cabbot use all of their cunning to move from clue to clue and to provide the suspense and mystery in this novel. This is a multi-layered mystery that explores all human behavior and the human psyche.

Peter Robinson has written a superb mystery. It encompasses detail in the characters, present and past. DCI Banks must find a killer who has escaped detection for fifty years. Can he reach this daunting challenge? One of the better written mystery novelists that leave us guessing until the last minute. Now onto the rest of the series. Highly recommended. prisrob