Innocent Graves [Hardcover]

Peter Robinson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1996

When the brutal murder of a teenage girl shatters the peace of the small village of Eastvale, Inspector Banks and his colleague, Susan Gay, dig beneath the surface of small-town secrets to uncover the guilty party. By the author of Final Account.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The more Chief Inspector Alan Banks investigates the murder of a schoolgirl in a church graveyard the less he likes the whole sordid affair. The vicar at St. Mary's has been allegedly seeking sex from his sexton; the vicar's wife has been seeking solace in a bottle and the arms of a schoolteacher; and those in and around the church aren't keen on anybody who doesn't view matters as they do. And there happens to be a few suspects who meet that description. Banks investigates a murder and finds religious and societal affairs stickier than those in the normal mystery.

From Publishers Weekly

Moving his ever dependable Yorkshire-based copper, Alan Banks (Final Account, 1995, etc.), to the periphery of this work, the equally dependable Robinson focuses instead on the tragic plight of a possibly innocent man charged with murder. In the process, Robinson adds another level of nuance to his already fully dimensioned fiction and takes a quantum leap as a writer. A schoolgirl is murdered on church ground. Her school bag is left open, and her clothes are disturbed. The local vicar is already embroiled in a sex scandal, and his adulterous wife is wandering drunkenly through the grounds when the body is found. Without a decent motive, but with a plethora of damning evidence, Banks is led to one Owen Pierce, a moody young schoolteacher. Pierce is revealed as a man with enough minor aberrations in his life to fashion a believable criminal. His smutty tastes in literature, photography and teenage women invite easy condemnation, and he is further burdened with a past lover who nurses a deep grievance against him. If Banks has occasionally appeared a shade too decent and placid in past works, this eighth appearance finds him with a new, sharper edge. Banks is still a kindly enough soul, but he knowingly occupies a world that has suddenly become more richly treacherous.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 346 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Hardcover; 1st edition (August 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425153150
• ISBN-13: 978-0425153154
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 4.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,275,323 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Peter Robinson's award-winning novels have been named a Best-Book-of-the-Year by Publishers Weekly, a Notable Book by the New York Times, and a Page-Turner-of-the-Week by People magazine. Robinson was born and raised in Yorkshire but has lived in North America for over twenty-five years. He now divides his time between North America and the U.K.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Banks Number Eight: Excellent, March 23, 2005

By 

snalen "snalen" (UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Innocent Graves (Inspector Banks Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)

Well, here's the 8th Banks novel in which a teenage pupil at the posh local private girls' school is found strangled in a graveyard. Suspicion alights on a Croatian refugee, Ive Jelacic; but while Banks is busy investigating that and other leads, his colleagues DI Barry Stott and DS Jim Hatchley get on the scent of a suspicious stranger spotted in a nearby pub and a nearby restaurant around the time of the crime. They are soon led to Owen Pierce, a local college lecturer, and very soon Pierce finds himself arrested and charged with murder.

This books stands out among the Banks novels so far in the prominence it allows to a secondary character. So much so that Pierce, the character in question, isn't really secondary at all but becomes very much the centre of the book to at lest as great a degree as does Banks. And it's s much a courtroom drama as a detective story, a long and very effective section of the narrative being taken up with Pierce's trial, a section during which Banks himself fades into the background. Compared to its predecessors in the Banks series I thought it about the best so far and a significant raising of his game on the part of Robinson: dark and clever and very gripping.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Refreshing change from the everyday mystery!, November 4, 2002

By 

HM (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Innocent Graves (Paperback)

This is the first book I have read from Robinson, and the only thing I regret is not finding this book sooner! This is an awesome novel by the extremely talented and humble Robinson. I must say, I truly enjoyed it for all it is worth. It is so deep, interesting, intelligant and inquesitive murder mystery. Never have I read a book that was so formally thought out. When you think you know who the killer is, there is always a twist and find myself questioning just how Peter Robinson will get himself put out of this theory, it alsmost seems impossible, but he always does. What guy. Pick up his books and read it people, honestly.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Inspector Banks is an apathetic cipher., but story is great, May 13, 2003

By 

"inthefoam2" (San Diego) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Innocent Graves (Hardcover)

This novel takes life seriously and asks the reader to examine some of his beliefs and assumptions about the world and existence. Unlike almost every crime novel (Thomas Cook and M. Connelly excluded)I read, this story has depth and "meat on its bones." For example we see how the police and the justice system can drive an innocent party to commit a heinous crime, which was only committed because the police were so eager to bring someone, anyone to trial. Also, we meet several very real lpeople, struggling to make it in life. Robinson pulls no punches in his gritty (often ugly) depiction of police officers and the squalid atmosphere of a police station for someone accused of a crime. Robinson pulls few punches in this story. Two problems, one major: 1)Minor: The parents of the murdered girl simply disappear from the novel--they needed a fuller role as the novel progressed; 2)Major problem: Main character, Banks, is flat and boring. His responses to what is going on around him almost make me think that he is clinically depressed, but Robinson doesn't give the reader any help in understanding the "major" character in the novel. Also, I assume the author wants us to think that Banks is an intelligent detective, but his willingness to acquiesce in the quick arrest of a suspect based on rather flimsy evidence and the zealousness of a clearly neurotic (obsessive) officer under his command makes this reader think that Banks is both apathetic (doesn't care who is arrested)and a poor detective.