Piece of My Heart by Peter Robinson
| Piece of My Heart by Peter Robinson | |
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| Category: Crime | |
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Reviewer: Sue Magee
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| Summary: The sixteenth Inspector Banks novel features two investigations, four decades apart. A good read if occasionally confusing. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 544 | Date: March 2007 |
| Publisher: Hodder | |
| ISBN: 978-0340836880 | |
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Back in the nineteen sixties, there was a pop music festival not far from Eastvale with a few bands playing that we'd even now think of as iconic. About twenty-five thousand people attended – tame by today's standards, but quite something in those days. There was, though, the usual clearing up to be done the morning after and when the sleeping bag was spotted it looked as though the girl inside was just sleeping off the excesses of the night before. She wasn't though – she'd been brutally murdered in the nearby woods and her body dumped at the edge of the festival.
The investigating officer was Detective Inspector Stanley Chadwick and the case gave him a few crosses of his own to bear. He was rather adrift from the current pop music culture – even slightly long hair annoyed him – and in addition, he had to cope with the fact that his daughter Yvonne was getting a little wayward and wanting to attend music festivals. Her father refused, but there are always ways around that sort of injunction, aren't there?
Four decades on Detective Chief Inspector Banks is called to investigate a much bloodier scene. A young journalist had been murdered in a holiday cottage – and all his identification removed. Banks has to identify the body and then try to solve the case – and the link starts to lead back to a long-ago case which everyone thought was solved.
It's a BOGOF police procedural – two investigations for the price of one and you'll be kept guessing about them both right to the end. There's an elegant contrast between the way that an investigation was carried out at the end of the sixties and at the beginning of the twenty-first century, but it's not laboured. The research has obviously been impressive. They're both good stories but I did occasionally find myself confused particularly as bands have more longevity than you might expect.
Peter Robinson's Chief Inspector Alan Banks Novels in Chronological Order
You might also enjoy 69ers: A Novel About the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival of Music by Jon Blake or The Vinyl Detective - The Run-Out Groove: Vinyl Detective 2 by Andrew Cartmel.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Piece of My Heart by Peter Robinson at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Piece of My Heart by Peter Robinson at Amazon.com.
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