The Summer That Never Was by Peter Robinson

The Summer That Never Was by Peter Robinson
Buy The Summer That Never Was by Peter Robinson at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Crime
Reviewer: Sue Magee
Summary: The thirteenth book in the Inspector Banks series looks at a crime from the sixties and there's an elegant contrast with a similar case in the present. Recommended.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
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Chief Inspector Alan Banks was on holiday on a Greek island when he read that a body had been unearthed on a building site in Peterborough. It's the body of a teenage boy and when Banks finds out that it's the body of his old friend Graham Marshall who went missing whilst doing his paper round in 1965 he decides to cut short his holiday to see if he can help in the search for the murderer. When the case is reopened some forty years later Banks is shocked to find that not only is his help superfluous, but he's also regarded as a suspect.

Back in Yorkshire a teenager has disappeared and initially D I Annie Cabot is in charge of the investigation, whilst Banks looks on. He's shocked to find that there are similarities between the two cases, despite the length of time which separates them. The two cases are skilfully knitted together. Banks realises that he really didn't know Graham Marshall at all well despite their close friendship and his years of guilt, whilst in Yorkshire it's evident that the parents of the missing boy knew very little about the real life their son lived.

They're clever plots too, neither of which worked out the way that I was expecting. The contrasts between the cases as well as the similarities serve to highlight how little we know of even those closest to us. For the first time I found Banks just a little formulaic. There's another woman in his life, but she felt as though she was there for the sake of the plot rather than anything else. It was, however, just a minor niggle in an otherwise very good book. There's the same sense of location which is present in all Robinson's books and dialogue which rings completely true.

There are few, if any, spoilers in this book but the same cannot be said for all books in the series and you will get more enjoyment from them if you read them in the order in which they were written.

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