A Necessary End
(Libby/OverDrive eAudiobook)

When a rowdy, no-nukes demonstration ends in 50 arrests, 50 escaped protesters, and one copper stabbed to death, the hunt for the murderer looks to be a grueling one. But Yorkshire flatfoot Alan Banks soon divines that the murderer was a deliberate one and that the policeman was killed by someone who knew him, for reasons other than the obvious political-environmental ones. Robinson shifts between Banks' investigation and the doings at a nearby farmhouse, where a group of militant 1960s leftovers reside. Robinson writes a topflight procedural with no pretensions. His characters are finely etched, his dialogue chatty, the small-town North England setting flawlessly evoked. The suspect field is narrowed down a shade too quickly, but that's only a minor quibble. This third in the Banks series is another winner. ~--Peter Robertson

Chief Inspector Alan Banks of Britain's Eastvale Regional Police reappears in another fluently written, superior mystery. In this third outing he plays good cop while Supt. Richard (``Dirty Dick'') Burgess, a special investigator from London CID, plays bad cop in investigating the murder of a young constable sent to keep order at an anti-nuclear demonstration. ``A full-blown riot in Eastvale, admittedly, on a small scale, was near unthinkable,'' Banks muses. It's a drowsy town of 14,000 that time has passed by, yet a murderer--one of the demonstrators--undeniably has struck with a flick-knife (switchblade). Dirty Dick, a notorious stud and heavy drinker, roars into town, convinced that Bolshies and terrorists have killed PCsic Gill. A user of terror tactics himself, he's intent on making a collar even if the evidence must be bent. He brushes off Banks's suggestions that the demonstration may have been used as cover for a grudge killing. In a story that uses considerable psychological subtlety in exploring the afterlives of '60s flower children, Banks traces the crime to its roots in the past. Toronto author Robinson ( Gallows View ; A Dedicated Man ) has created a stalwart cop in Alan Banks, a man who loves justice and understands a woman's heart. Mystery Guild alternate; paperback rights to Avon . (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

The author of A Dedicated Man ( LJ 7/91) returns with another fine traditional English mystery featuring Inspector Banks. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

When the crowd recedes from an anti-nuke rally in quiet Eastvale, crowd-controlling P.C. Edwin Gill lies dead. Chief Inspector Alan Banks (A Dedicated Man, p. 698, etc.), left alone for two weeks while his wife and children visit her ailing father, has to deal not only with the mystery of who stabbed bullying P.C. Gill--the knife is swiftly traced to Maggie's Farm, home to mellow, aging radical Seth Cotton and a pick-up commune including, among others, gentle Mara Delacey and troubled Paul Boyd--but with the problems of fending off the usual pangs of lust for psychologist Jenny Fuller (now involved with Dennis Osmond, another suspect), and dealing with officious, womanizing Supt. Richard (``Dirty Dick'') Burgess, a Scotland Yard interloper who won't stick at anything for fast results. Alan smokes, drinks, frets, and otherwise behaves like an increasingly attractive human being en route to a denouement right out of Ruth Rendell's second drawer. Fans of British procedurals should get to know this appealing series.