Customer Reviews

Piece of My Heart: A Novel of Suspense

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Two murders, two different periods of time and two different investigating officers. In the present day Yorkshire we have Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks puzzling over the killing of a visiting music journalist. In the last heady days of the 1960's Detective Inspector Stanley Chadwick battles to keep the problems at home muddying the waters of his murder investigation into the death of a young woman at a fields rock concert. The up and coming stars of Chadwick's 1969 have had their day and in the present day of Banks, they're now retired veteran rock gods. The times have changed but Bank knows his Yorkshire and its people well enough by now to be certain in his belief that old crimes can never truly be forgotten.

Chadwick has a dual agenda as a parent when he assigns his crew to what might seem an impossible task - pinpointing one killer in a cast of thousands that attended an open air rock event with multiple bands and attendees. It is difficult enough to keep tabs on his own daughter who is embracing, at what he deems to be a very young age, the morality free and responsibility free lifestyle of the 1960's hippy culture. Chadwick relies on process, tried and true methods and the elimination of suspects one by one. It proves rather hard to achieve this when the people he investigates are barely aware of what they themselves did that night, let alone the activities of anyone else.

The modern day dilemmas of Banks mirror those of his predecessor in that he has a child connected with the music industry and that his murder suspects are cagey, at best. The common elements in the two crimes are what drive Banks to re-open what was supposed to be a previously resolved murder enquiry in order to get to the truth of his own.

Some of the frustration readers have expressed with this novel is that it is not much of a whodunit. Robinson has had a lot of time to craft and flesh out DCI Banks and tends not to waste time on giving his character, and thus the reader, pointers of how to behave and process. They have already been established in previous novels and what we have here is a current snapshot of where the character is in his life story. The mirror past narrative of Chadwick does, however, serve well to add much needed colour to the novel and is done, we feel, with much affection for the era and its influence on the modern day in this particular part of the world.

PIECE OF MY HEART will of course appeal to the readers of the series while not being the stellar entry in it so far. It is classic procedural Banks but even with the addition of the 1960's storyline this novel tends to progress rather ponderously with little to reward the reader for their efforts at resolution. It lacks any real sense of suspense and sadly, no twists and turns are included to race the novel towards conclusion. Acknowledged, they are not always required, but would have been a welcome inclusion in this rather bland effort from a very successful novelist well known for his rich characterization, meticulous plots and moody, sombre tones.

PIECE OF MY HEART is the 16th novel in the Detector Inspector Alan Banks series.

The Sixties are almost over, it's summer and it's a summer of sex, drugs and rock and roll and at a major Woodstock like rock fest where the Mad Hatters thrill their audience in a show that's going to propel them on their way to stardom. This summer is also the last summer

Linda Lovesworth ever sees. Her body is found close to the festival and since Linda gave up a baby for adoption when she was sixteen, the police conclude she was killed by her lifestyle, but not before Detective Inspector Stanley Chadwick does his level best to try and solve the murder.

Almost four decades later London rock journalist Nicholas Barber is murdered near to Detective Inspector Banks's Yorkshire Precinct. As it turns out Barber had been researching a story about the Mad Hatters just as the band had been planning a reunion tour. Lover of Rock and Roll as he is, Banks finds this a case well suited to him and after a bit he begins to suspect that the murder DI Chadwick was unable to solve might somehow be connected to Barber's murder, especially after he finds out there is just a little too much coincidental tragedy connected to the Mad Hatters. Or course, Banks is the only one to think the cases are connected, but that does not deter the intrepid inspector.

I really enjoyed this book, especially the way Peter Robinson was able do deftly switch between time periods. I never lost interest. It goes without saying that if you're an Inspector Banks fan, this is a must read and if you haven't delved into any of the inspector's cases, this is a good place to start. It may be the fourteenth novel in the series, but it reads like a stand alone. This is a very good book.

Peter Robinson's "Piece of My Heart" features two murder investigations that are separated by more than three decades. In a series of flashbacks from 1969, Detective Inspector Stanley Chadwick searches for the killer of a beautiful young girl who was found stabbed to death after a rock concert. In the present, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks teams up with Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot to solve the homicide of a freelance music journalist named Nick Barber who was murdered in a Yorkshire cottage. What, if anything, connects these two seemingly unrelated cases?

This mystery is a wonderful vehicle for the versatile and enormously talented Peter Robinson to explore a variety of themes that he has dealt with time and again in this highly praised series: What are some of the ways in which the past intersects with the present? Why do parents who want nothing more than to protect their teenaged children alienate them and even provoke them into committing self-destructive acts? How do political considerations wreak havoc with a murder investigation? As always, the author's beautifully evocative word pictures create indelible images. Nobody describes Yorkshire and the people who live there better than Peter Robinson.

Alan Banks has matured greatly over the years. He has quit smoking, drinks moderately, is more circumspect in his love life, and cuts fewer corners professionally. However, he is still insightful, aggressive in conducting interviews, and unwilling to take abuse from his superiors. He remains a dogged and tenacious investigator who generally gets his man. Banks's counterpart in the sixties, DI Chadwick, is a World War II veteran with horrible memories that he cannot quite eradicate. He is also the worried father of a rebellious sixteen year-old-girl who runs with a fast crowd. Chadwick's professional detachment is shattered by his personal distaste for the devotees of the counterculture. Whereas Banks is liberal, open-minded, and realistic, Chadwick is opinionated, narrow-minded, and inflexible.

Robinson spends a great deal of time delving into the psyches of rock musicians and their groupies as well as of the friends and relatives of the dead journalist. Did the chaotic social scene back in the sixties foster a climate of peace and love or of anarchy and violence? One of the characters sums up the situation this way: "Strip away that thin veneer of civilization and convention, of obedience and order, and what do you get--the beast within."

The solutions to the crimes become apparent only after Cabbot, Banks, and their colleagues conduct numerous interviews and do an exhaustive amount of research. Two minor quibbles are that the book is a bit too long and some of the facts that emerge at the end come out of left field. Still, "Piece of My Heart" is a fully realized and complex suspense novel that goes well beyond a mere whodunit.

I am a great fan of Peter Robinson's Alan Banks mysteries. In this one, we are taken back and forth from 1969 to the present as the threads of two seemingly unconnected cases weave a whole cloth. This book, while not quite as fascinating as some of Robinson's previous ones, held my interest. The characters are well drawn and their continuing story makes this book satisfying for fans of the series.

Robinson goes back to the premise he used in his earlier novel "In a Dry Season", moving back and forth in time between the present and the time of a long unsolved murder (although I don't believe he pulled it off as well this time).

In this book, the long unsolved murder occurred during a "Woodstock" like music festival in the late 1960s. In the present day, a journalist researching a band that played at the festival is murdered. This leads to a re-opening of the earlier investigation.

As I said in my title, this is a solid installment by Robinson, but not his best. I actually enjoyed the first 2/3 of the book quite well, but the ending is somewhat unsatisfying. A slight "thumbs up".

If you haven't read Peter Robinson's Alan Banks stories, don't start with this one. Go back to the beginning (Gallows View)and read them all in order. Robinson developes his characters slowly over time, allowing them to change and grow. Each book adds to the understanding of the people, history and environment of contemporary England. By the time you get to Piece of My Heart, Inspector Banks will surly have won a big piece of your heart, and you will have discoved a wonderful, diverse group of characters that seem like family and friends. I haven't enjoyed a protagonist this much since McDonald's Travis Magee roamed Florida.

PIECE OF MY HEART is the latest in Peter Robinson's extraordinary mystery series featuring British Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks. Here, though, Banks is absent for fully half of the book. Indeed, a great deal of this novel takes place in September 1969, at which time the murder of a winsome young woman at a rock music festival occupies the attention of Detective Inspector Stanley Chadwick. Meanwhile, in October 2005, Banks is engaged in the investigation of a rock music journalist. PIECE OF MY HEART proceeds along twin, alternating paths until their convergence ultimately makes clear the link between the two cases.

Linda Lofthouse is the subject of the 1969 case, found murdered in a sleeping bag after the Brimleigh Festival. Chadwick is hardly an expert on the youth culture at the time; names like Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Peter Townsend mean nothing to him, never mind that his daughter Yvonne puts him in the mind of the victim. Indeed, his unease over his daughter's lifestyle --- the secretiveness, the late hours that turn into early ones, and the music --- to some extend intrude upon his investigation. What Chadwick doesn't know is that Yvonne had a tenuous but important tie to Lofthouse. He does discover, however, that Lofthouse was connected to the Mad Hatters, an up-and-coming rock band who played the festival.

Banks's present-day victim is Nick Barber, who was just beginning research for an in-depth article about the Mad Hatters. After incredible success marred by personal tragedies, the band is about to launch a reunion tour. Banks has no idea that the murder that occurred some three-odd decades ago was the catalyst for the killing that he is investigating now, and that his investigation may solve the mystery of both killings, performed years apart but forever connected.

Robinson is nothing short of a marvel. He does for London what Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald did for southern California, using his stories against the backdrop of an urban locale to function as a documentation of social and psychological mores of a point in time. He arguably has never succeeded as well as he does with PIECE OF MY HEART. Anyone interested in the more obscure elements of British rock music of the late 1960s will find much to delight in here with the offhand mention of bands who achieved little more than cult status (it has been decades since I have given even a passing thought to Atomic Rooster), a device that lends much to the authenticity of the portions of the tale taking place in the 1960s.

While not a lot appears to happen on the surface --- Banks asks some questions, does research, broods, poses more questions --- Robinson maintains a quiet tension from first page to last, one that makes it almost impossible to stop reading. Additionally, Banks's personal life is just boring enough to make any variation extremely interesting. If you haven't read Robinson before, save some time this summer to catch up on his previous volumes. I guarantee you will want to.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Thought you'd left the `60s rock `n roll scene far behind? Not so in Peter Robinson's remarkably conceived crime story in which he connects two criminal investigations - one which takes place in 1969 and the other in 2005.

Seems that in the earlier case a young woman was found dead in her sleeping bag following a music festival. She had been murdered and was discovered among the bottles, drug paraphernalia and other leavings common to a British outdoor concert at that time. As it turns out she was slain during a Led Zeppelin set. Who was she and why was she killed? All readers initially know is that she had some dealings with a fictional rock band, the Mad Hatters.

This doesn't seem at all the type of crime usually associated with Robinson's popular protagonist Detective Chief Alan Banks. At the present he has more than he can handle. As readers of Strange Affair may remember Banks recently lost his brother, and now he is called to investigate the murder of a stranger who came to Yorkshire a short while ago and then was fatally crowned with a poker.

As it turns out the journalist was working on a piece for MOJO magazine about the Mad Hatters. And, what a band they were - one member went over the deep end (mentally), another drowned in the shallow end of a swimming pool.

Thus are Banks and Detective Inspector Stanley Chadwick, who was assigned to the dead girl's case, drawn together and readers are treated to twin narratives as the mystery of why there is any connection between the two murders is revealed.

Two mysteries for the price of one, both crafted by one of the best writers around.

- Gail Cooke

In September 1969, now the morning after the first Brimleigh Festival, Dave Sampson feels good about its success. Much of the crowd has left with volunteers cleaning the mess they left behind. Dave notices a sleeping bag that appears as if someone is inside; when he unzips it he finds a dead body. Assigned to investigate the homicide is die hard WWII veteran Detective Inspector Stanley Chadwick, who detests the dirty hippies. The only nebulous clue so far is the victim apparently had ties to psychedelic band the Mad Hatters.

Three plus decades later in the isolated hamlet of Fordham, Inspector Alan Banks investigates the murder of Nick Barber, a freelance music journalist who was writing an article on aging rock stars the Mad Hatters for MOJO magazine. Banks learns of the homicide thirty five years ago at the rock festival and wonders if there is a connection as he has problems accepting tragic coincidence. He continues to make inquiries while pondering whether Nick solved the 1969 murder leading to his subsequent death.

The sixteenth Banks British police procedural is a superb entry that is freshened up by the 1969 investigation that fascinatingly compares police methodology and attitude with the present day inquiries. The fascinating story line switches effortlessly back and forth between the two eras as the audience observes Chadwick's efforts vs. that of Banks. Thus readers obtain two wonderful cases, historical and current, while wondering along with Banks what Barber learned that killed him.

Harriet Klausner

For my money, Peter Robinson is arguably the best police procedural writer out there today. His books are taut, compelling, and often poignant in the themes they explore. His characters are first-rate as are his plots. In this well-executed book Robinson finally goes in depth into the rock and roll culture of the late 1960s, thus revealing deeper knowledge of the subject than he has only hinted at in previous books. His tandem plots that toggle between the Sixties and the modern day (what do you call this period: "the oughts??")are clever and highly complementary in the hands of such a journeyman as Robinson. You can't go wrong with a Robinson book -- this is no exception.