Recent reads

One series I want to stay with, the other not so much

Gallows View (1987), the first Inspector Banks novel by Peter Robinson. I’ve been hearing about Robinson for years, and was not disappointed. Gallows View had clearly defined characters- even the minor ones had enough personality to be memorable. Robinson, and Inspector Banks deftly handled the linked three cases, and brought each to a fitting conclusion. The reader followed the perpetrators of one, and watched Banks sift the clues to discover the wrong-doers in the other two. It was a satisfying amalgam of procedural and whodunnit (or who’s doing it?).

The POV shifted when needed to show action that wasn’t seen by the protagonist. The technique of narrating from just above the shoulder, and also being enough under the skin of a character to describe, if not report their thoughts, is one I hope to use for both novels I am working on these days.

My first impression is DI Banks is a wounded, slightly jaded investigator who is a cop because he truly wants to keep people safe from those who do bad things.

I’ll try to read all the DI Banks books in order, so I can track the hero’s progression through time. I just traded another trunkload of books in to a great second-hand shop (Juniper Books in Windsor) and have a big credit balance I can use to get them.

A Rip Through Time (2022), by Kelley Armstrong. This is the debut of a new series about a 28 year old Vancouver Police detective who is somehow transported back in time to Edinburgh of 150 years ago. She lands in the body of a teenaged housemaid whose shady past and larcenous habits have led her to be almost murdered.

The modern day detective has to find her feet in this “new” world and learn to pass as the young servant in the household of the operator of a funeral home, who is also a pioneer in the field of forensic science. She also has a more than passing interest in trying to find her way back to her own time.

She wants to go home, naturally. She’s also worried about the havoc the untrustworthy maid could be causing in her time, amongst her family and friends. I found it hard, as a reader, to care much about that, not having “met” the protagonist’s loved ones.

It’s a fun book, more on the romance-fantasy end of the spectrum than my normal reads. I found it hard to care about the protagonist’s efforts to go home, because it was pretty clear that this first volume in the series was intended to set her up in this situation, and that more adventures can only ensue if she stays in the past. I will probably read the next in the series, just to see where it’s headed.