The 27th book in the number one best-selling Alan Banks crime series - by the master of the police procedural. I may be assuming too much, but NOT DARK YET seems to be the run-up to the conclusion of Peter Robinson’s series featuring Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks of the Eastvale, Yorkshire police force. Robinson has depicted Banks’ aging naturally (for the most part), so this latest installment finds the iconic protagonist somewhat faded, if not weary, as the world around him moves ahead with him. As a result, this book --- the 27th entry in the series --- marks a number of personal passages for Banks, as well as the resolution of a couple of professional cases that have formed an extended story arc over several prior novels. Robinson is an author with amazing empathy, a snare-trap ear for dialogue, and a clear eye for the telling detail.”—Michael Connelly

Their conversation is desultory—Zelda is by turns disingenuous, sulky, and brittle. She finally spills the beans. Banks can’t understand why she held out on him. Zelda blames it on growing up in the Soviet system: police are not to be trusted. She senses Banks is not convinced. Her next comment proves prophetic: “I’ll miss this place.” A few days after their lunch, she disappears—not voluntarily, she’s been kidnapped. Read our review of Many Rivers to Cross by Peter Robinson The gruesome double murder at an Eastvale property developer's luxury home should be an open and shut case for Superintendent Banks and his team of detectives. There's a clear link to the notoriously vicious Albanian mafia, men who left the country suspiciously soon after the death. Then they find a cache of spy-cam videos hidden in the house - and Annie and Gerry's investigation pivots to the rape of a young girl that could cast the murders in an entirely different light.Crooked property developer Connor Blaydon and his butler are found murdered at the former’s Eastvale mansion. They are known to have links to the Albanian mafia but the discovery of spy-cam videos depicting a rape indicate the motive needn’t be simply a falling out of thieves. There are some things about this book that I did not like. Banks runs afoul of the Police Conduct division (evidently the British equivalent of Internal Affairs departments in the United States), who suspect that he might have been involved in some nefarious activity. There does not seem to be any particular reason for this, and I think - or hope, at least - that this is exaggerated. The case of the murder of a bent property developer and his factotum a week earlier is proving frustrating, although he has a chief suspect in his sights. The victim’s business partner appears to be a member of the Albanian mafia and fled the UK straight after the vicious killing. DI Annie Cabot and DC Gerry Masterson, on Banks’team, discover a video recording of a suspected rape while searching the murder scene. It was seemingly filmed at a booze and cocaine-fuelled party attended by hordes of young women a few weeks earlier. We reviewed earlier Banks novel When the Music’s Over. For more Yorkshire crime you could try the rather more spooky I am Dustby Louise Beech. Entries in the Banks series frequently include many passages about music. This is not a subject about which I am especially knowledgeable, and I am generally not interested in these.

As mentioned, this was my first encounter with Peter Robinson and I have already added the other twenty-six books in the series to my TBR. I enjoyed the writing and loved the characters. The regular reference to music had me reaching for my Spotify account to hear what the fuss was about. I cannot wait to spend more time with Alan Banks. Zelda plays a very prominent role in all of these books. She had been brought up in an orphanage in Moldova following her parents' death. She left the orphanage when she was seventeen; she was immediately kidnapped and kept as a sex slave for the next ten years. She had finally freed herself by killing her captor. She had eventually made her way to England, begun working as an artist, and met Banks' friend Ray Cabbot, also an artist, and the father of Banks' colleague Annie Cabbot. Despite Ray being significantly older, he and Zelda had joined in a relationship. It had been noted that Zelda was a "super-recognizer," a person with a remarkable ability to recognize faces, whether in person or from a reproduction. Because of this, Zelda became a consultant to a British government office.

Games

Zelda couldn’t stop trembling, and the breath seemed to solidify in her chest. This had been her home between the ages of four and seventeen. This was the place that had made her what she was, or what she could have been. Now, though, it was a ruin, and so was she, and the irony didn’t escape her. What the hell was she doing here, running away from the good life she had found, despite all the odds, and from a good man, who was more than she deserved, seeking God only knew what? Revenge? Atonement? Reconciliation?

You may also consider that Banks’s habit of‘ogling’younger women and being jokey blokey about it, and phrases like being‘pussy-whipped’strike an uneasy chord in a story in which young girls are sexually abused and raped. Or you may decide that these are justified, to underline the point that misogyny and abuse are alive and well in 2021. Not Dark Yet is the 27th Inspector Banks mystery. But it’s the first that I’ve read. And therein lies the problem. The twenty-seventh installment of the #1 bestselling Inspector Banks series by "the grand master of the genre" ( Literary Review), Peter Robinson. Zelda’s kidnapping sends Banks over the edge. The last few months have taken a toll on him. He is tense, solitary, and brusque, flirting with insubordination when talking to his superiors. His family ties are important to him, particularly his relationships with his daughter and her new husband and his son. Still, at the wedding reception he comes perilously close to embodying the trope of an old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn. Naturally, Banks’s discomfort wraps itself around music.Robinson is an author with amazing empathy, a snare-trap ear for dialogue, and a clear eye for the telling detail."--Michael Connelly I had felt that the previous two books in this series were not as good as previous volumes. They both had cliffhanger endings, leaving too much unresolved. I had concluded my review of Many Rivers to Cross here on Goodreads as follows:

Instead of discovering Connor’s murderer, however, the grainy and blurred footage reveals another crime: a brutal rape. If they can discover the woman’s identity, it could lead to more than justice for the victim; it could change everything the police think they know about Connor and why anyone would want him dead. I think that Not Dark Yet is considerably better. I suspect that a reader not familiar with the earlier books might find this one confusing, but for readers who have read the earlier books, there should not be a problem.Banks and his team have business to attend to as well - there's been a double murder at a luxury home. The Albanian mafia may have been responsible - and a series of covertly filmed videos that add another layer to the case. The case takes a horrific turn when a review of the video files determines that a rape took place. Banks is tasked with finding Connor’s killer, as well as identifying the rape victim, who might have been motivated to murder him herself. He does not realize that an assailant is much closer to him and his team than they can possibly suspect. There are a number of twists and turns in the investigation, one of which intersects with Banks’ past and a longstanding nemesis of his.