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A distraught mother tells police she has found a gun on top of her daughter's wardrobe, but her old friend Chief Inspector Alan Banks isn't around to help and the police operation to recover the weapon takes a tragic turn. Banks's own daughter, Tracy, tells Jaff McCready, the girl's boyfriend, what has happened and discovers that the gun had actually been taken from him by her friend, presumably to get back at him for having been caught kissing Tracy on the dance floor of a club. Tracy is drawn into helping Jaff make a rapid exit from the city in case the police connect the weapon to him. They hide out in her father's remote cottage while Banks is on holiday in the States, but when DI Annie Cabot comes around to water the plants in her colleague's absence, Tracy discovers just how much of a bad boy Jaff is capable of being. This was certainly another case of arriving late at a party for me, and in this case, one where one of the hosts was absent for much of the time. Chief Inspector Banks plays no part in the main storyline for nearly half of the book, which made this an interesting place to join a clearly well-established series. The story suffered from a lack of pace in the early stages, but then gathered momentum as genuinely shocking events unfolded, showing Tracy that Jaff's apparent sophistication and charm was nothing more than a veneer covering a brutal disregard for others coupled with ruthless selfishness. The side-story of Banks's holiday contributes nothing to the story as a whole and for me, could easily have been dispensed with. However, once the pace did finally pick up, it stayed there and the closing stages of the story were tense and gripping. Even though I'd only made Tracy Banks's acquaintance for the first time in this book, I cared enough about her to hope she could extricate herself from Jaff's clutches. The supporting cast of villains, in particularly the chilling Ciaran and Darren, were both intriguing and unpleasant, and none of them were people anyone with any degree of sense would want to tangle with. The violence, when it came, which fortunately wasn't too often, was genuinely shocking, and although there were elements of the climax that seemed just a little too convenient, on the whole my credibility was never stretched to breaking point. I've certainly had far worse experiences arriving late to a series and I can understand why Chief Inspector Banks has built up such a following. § Linda Wilson is a writer, and retired solicitor, with an interest in archaeology and cave art, who now divides her time between England and France.
Reviewed by Linda Wilson, April 2011
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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