View source for Dry Bones That Dream by Peter Robinson

{{infobox1
|title=Dry Bones That Dream
|author=Peter Robinson
|reviewer=Sue Magee
|genre=Crime
|summary=The seventh book in the Inspector Banks series looks at the death of an accountant - a quiet man who seemed to have quite a bit to hide.  Recommended.
|rating=4
|buy=Maybe
|borrow=Yes
|pages=384
|publisher=Pan
|date=May 2001
|isbn=978-0330482202
|cover=0330482203
|aznuk=0330482203
|aznus=B003GK21WG
}}

Chief Inspector Alan Banks saw the body for the first time in the early hours of the morning.  Keith Rothwell has been taken from the house where his wife and daughter were tied up and executed in the barn.  Executed?  Well, there really was no other word for it: a shotgun to the back of the head as he knelt on the ground left him unrecognisable but for his clothes and the contents of his pockets.  It looked like a professional hit, but what could the mild-mannered accountant have tone to make such deadly enemies?  And who, exactly, is Robert Calvert?

The more Banks digs, the more it seems that Keith Rothwell had quite a lot to hide – and people to hide from.  There's a nasty international angle too, which brings Banks' old sparring partner, Detective Superintendent Richard 'Dirty Dick' Burgess hot foot from Scotland Yard and it's not long before there are a couple of lots of thugs wreaking havoc in and around Leeds.  Banks soon has difficulty in working out who is on who's side and where the truth lives.

It's a vivid story, almost a thriller rather than a police procedural but still a good addition to the Inspector Banks series.  Banks and his wife seem to be drifting apart with little to bring them back together.  He's attracted to other women and only circumstances save him from infidelity and a violent side that we haven't seen before emerges.  It's reassuring to see his dark side – it makes him more human.

If you know Leeds you'll be able to walk the streets with the characters, and Robinson does a good job of bringing the city to life, not just geographically, but culturally too and if you enjoy this type of book you'll probably also enjoy the work of [[:Category:Stuart Pawson|Stuart Pawson]].

I did suspect how this book would work out fairly early on, but dismissed it as being too far-fetched.  It's a tribute to Robinson's writing that he went down the road I suspected but I was nodding rather than looking sceptical.

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[[Peter Robinson's Chief Inspector Alan Banks Novels in Chronological Order]]

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