Customer Reviews

Innocent Graves

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

If you are familiar with the Inspector Banks novels, get ready for a noticeable change in the usual flow of the story. There are several things that are different in "Innocent Graves", but the first one that comes to mind is that Inspector Banks has a less prominent role in the story. Or maybe I should refer to is as less "screen time". This happens because there is a significant portion of the story that covers the trial of the accused in the murder of a sixteen-year-old girl. Here Robinson shows once again that he is willing to take risks, and even though he did not write a legal thriller per se, he did take a step in that direction, with a result that was more than adequate.

There are a couple of new characters in Bank's team, and since one of them presents a striking contrast with the boisterous Hatchley, I liked the result of this experiment. Also, the usual elements that make Robinson's writing special are present, especially the conversation fragments that give us great insight into the minds of the characters. I felt that he was successful with the construction of the mystery too, even though he could have crafted the ending a little better, instead of just letting it resolve by itself and fall on the lap of the police.

My main gripe with this installment has to do with the little development we see in the sub-plot having to do with Banks and his family. In previous novels we witnessed how the inspector and his wife started having issues after their kids left the nest, and it would have been interesting to find out how this progressed. After all, one of the main reasons why I read series is because I like the character development from book to book and the elements outside the main plot. I hope that in the next novel Robinson rectifies this and delivers another outstanding work!

Trusting the evidence and not his own instinct has tragic repercussions in the latest Inspector Banks mystery from Peter Robinson. When a schoolgirl, the daughter of a well-connected, recently titled gentleman, is killed, the evidence points to a loner with no apparent alibi. Though he questions the findings intuitively, Banks does not go with his gut. The repercussions of this decision are felt as far away as London. Robinson insight on the media feeding frenzy surrounding crimes such as this are right on target. His view of the police, while sympathetic, is often acerbic as well. Another wonderful read

In reading reviews of Peter Robinson's series, reviewers keep saying this is not his best, but no one tells me which ones are his best...Please help!

Deborah Harrison is the affluent and intelligent daughter of an important businessman. One day, on her way home from St. Mary's school, she is strangled in a graveyard. The residents of the Yorkshire town of Eastvale are shocked by her death, and Deborah's father is pressuring the police to come up with a suspect quickly. Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks is called in and he, along with his colleagues, arrest an English teacher for the crime. Peter Robinson does some interesting things in "Innocent Graves". He tells a good part of the story through the eyes of the arrested man, Owen Pierce, who swears that he is innocent. We experience Owen's panic and bitterness as he is processed through the criminal justice system and stands trial for a crime that he claims he did not commit. Robinson once again shows how difficult and painstaking police work is. Banks and his colleagues must interview dozens of people over a period of months to get to the truth. The patience and the perseverance of the Eastvale police force are strained to the breaking point during this case. The ending is a bit melodramatic and not completely believable. However, in spite of a few minor flaws, "Innocent Graves" is an engrossing mystery and a wonderful character study.

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.

Having said that I can understand to a degree why some readers may not like the books. Banks is a character that has grown over several books and the author is very comfortable not only with the character of Banks, but all the other character too. To me this makes the stories flow because the author instinctively knows how his characters are going to react in certain situations. The books are produced as a series and it is nice if you can read them all in the order they were written, but this is by no means compulsory as each book stands alone. They are what I would call `light' reading. By that I mean that they flow and not that they are third rate in any sense, in fact quite the opposite.

As murders go the strangling of a teenage girls with the strap of her own school satchel was nothing out of the ordinary for Inspector Banks. It just seemed that much more brutal in a quiet Yorkshire village than it would have done on the streets of central London where human beings didn't seem to care too much what they did to one another.

Deborah Harrison had been found in the local church yard one foggy night, but she was no ordinary sixteen-year-old, her father was an extremely powerful man who mixed in the highest orders of industry, defence and information of a classified nature. Even poor Deborah seemed to have her own secrets.

Peter Robinson always delivers a good read, but this one, I feel, is inferior to the others I've read. I dunno: I just felt this book wasted a lot of time and space mostly going nowhere. The key to the whole mystery was revealed by a serendipitous finding -- just a little too convenient for my liking. There was a good courtroom drama, which was a refreshing innovation by Robinson. But, all in all, I thought this was a fairly dull book. I've always felt that English police procedurals were different than Yank procedurals in that the English ones are slower paced but more intellectually weighty. The American ones pack more impact and razzle dazzle and keep you glued to the pages. But I think Robinson let this one get away from him. Too much talk; not enough credible action.

I've enjoyed the Inspector Banks series in the past (particularly "Final Account" which had a great twist in the last few pages), but "Innocent Graves" is all talk and very little pay-off. Banks himself continues to be an interesting character, and Robinson's writing is never less than superb, but this particular mystery was a big "who cares?" for me. The mystery itself isn't really much of a mystery and its solution has more to do with blind luck and a piece of evidence that just happens to appear, like a deus ex machina at the last moment, than it does with any brilliant deduction on Banks's part. "Innocent Graves" seems far more interested in the psychology of the suspects (one in particular, whose story concludes in an all too predictable fashion) than in satisfying its readers with a great solution to the crime. I've always found this kind of mystery a bit of a bore; give me a couple of corpses and some brilliant twists and I'm happy. There are a couple of corpses here, but no twist; just a far too unbelievable and uninteresting ending.