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IN A DRY SEASON
by Peter Robinson
Avon, January 2000
446 pages
$7.50
ISBN: 0380794772

It is an English hot summer. For several weeks, the water levels of Thornfield reservoir keep going down and down until it is totally dried up revealing the ruins of an old town. In 1953, the last citizens of Hobb’s End were evacuated in order to create a reservoir for the neighboring towns. Now after almost forty years the town returns bringing in a deep secret. A small boy playing in the abandoned village falls through the ceiling of one of the houses and finds a body that has been kept hidden for over fifty years. Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks is currently on the Chief Constable Jeremiah ‘Jimmy” Riddle ’s black list after the incidents in BLOOD AT THE ROOT and is waiting for the other shoe to drop. He is sent to assist the local Detective Sergeant with what appears to be an unsolvable case for some unknown reasons. Together with DS Annie Cabbot, he will identify the female victim and in the process reawaken World War II memories from a former citizen of Hobb’s End. This, at first, unnamed person wrote a manuscript of the time spent in town before it was flooded revealing tidbit on some of the townspeople. Little did she know that she holds the key to solve the mystery. Is she guilty? Did she kill her? What does she know?

Critics have called IN A DRY SEASON, one of Peter Robinson’s best novels and after reading it you will surely agree. It is a haunting story told through an old manuscript as well as throughout the police investigation. Character development is strong here as Inspector Banks goes through some personal changes in his life after Sandra, his wife of over twenty years, left him to be with another man. He is trying to cope and trying to reconnect with his children. He will also begin a love affair with a woman who has let her past define her, but after story’s end it is hard to find out how their relationship will turn out. The author ends this romance in a cliffhanger setting that will have readers rushing up to pick COLD IS THE GRAVE.

The victim at the bottom of the reservoir was a crime of passion and it is with that passion that the manuscript tells the story. Many people at Hobb’s End were affected in the past that Banks and Cabbot sift through to get to the bottom of the case. These flashbacks do not interfere with the tale’s narrative leading to the book’s powerful climax. If there was any doubt before, there is not any now. Peter Robinson has carved a niche in mystery and police procedural fiction. It is hard to go wrong with any of his novels. So, if you have yet to try one of his books, this one is a great way to begin.

Note: The US hardcover of this edition was released in 1999 and is currently out of print.

Reviewed by Angel L. Soto, April 2003

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