Status
Call number
Series
Genres
Collection
Publication
Description
Fiction. Literature. Mystery. A dedicated man is dead in the Yorkshire dales-a former university professor, wealthy historian, and archaeologist who loved his adopted village. It is a particularly heinous slaying, considering the esteem in which the victim, Harry Steadman, was held by his neighbors and colleagues-by everyone, it seems, except the one person who bludgeoned the life out of the respected scholar and left him half-buried in a farmer's field. Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks left the violence of London behind for what he hoped would be the peaceful life of a country policeman. But the brutality of Steadman's murder only reinforces one ugly, indisputable truth: that evil can flourish in even the most bucolic of settings. There are dangerous secrets hidden in the history of this remote Yorkshire community that have already led to one death. And Banks will have to plumb a dark and shocking local past to find his way to a killer...before yesterday's sins cause more blood to be shed.… (more)
User reviews
Banks hits a dead end in the investigation. So he turns, appropriately, to history. He investigates the background of people who know the professor years ago, trying to put together a picture of the relationships in case this sheds new light on the case. The professor’s wife, some of his local drinking buddies, a colleague from York and a couple of friends from the past – all come together like a puzzle to reveal a complex picture of interpersonal feuds and friendships that ultimately reveal the killer.
A local historian is found dead, Banks investigates then a local girl goes missing. Banks believes both cases must be linked. A few twists and turns then Banks finally gets
Not a bad book it is over 25 years old so no computers, mobile phones and the characters can smoke in the pub. Totally alien to modern days.
So Banks begins to investigate the life of Harry Steadman. But digging through the past can upset people, and the further Banks gets, the more obvious it becomes that the past is more dark and complicated than he could ever have imagined. The situation is made all the more complicated when a local teenager becomes involved and tries to take the case into her own hands. Sally Lumb, albeit bright and inquisitive, is young and naive, is privy to some fairly pertinent information regarding the case. Her poor decision making, however, lands her in trouble. Banks must then try to solve Sally’s mystery without alerting too many people to the fact that the killer may be ready to strike again.
I love Peter Robinson’s books. I know that’s a big statement considering I’ve only read two, but his writing style and his emphasis on old fashioned detective work makes his books easy and enjoyable to read. They are quickly devoured, but delivered at such a thrilling pace that picking the killer is damn near impossible. Writing a good crime novel means giving away a little, but not too much information, to keep the reader guessing and to make the whole experience exciting. If you like good crime novels, I urge you to read Peter Robinson.
There were things about this novel which I enjoyed: Banks seemed to be a well-adjusted family man with no hidden past tragedy and his relationships with his colleagues were realistically portrayed. However, the standard of the writing was not great (favourite line: "I think I was responding to her sexual power unconsciously, and I was put off by her appearance") and the female characters were a bit off somehow. Penny Cartwright seemed to spend the novel having massive mood swings and behaving completely incoherently. Her back story was odd - I don't think people do make up incest-style gossip at all readily personally.
While I'm glad the villain was who it turned out to be, I don't think we were given enough clues to work things out for ourselves and Banks kind of stumbled across the answer by discovering the baddies red-handed. Finally, the whole Poirot-style "this is how it went down" explanation at the end was very unprofessional, since it is addressed to his wife and two civilians (and he found out most of it from a confession).
Disappointed.
It is summertime in Yorkshire and the weather is glorious. Young lovers spend their time outdoors and tourists are crawling over the moors. But it is neither a young lover nor a tourist who discovers the body of Harry Steadman underneath a stone wall; rather it is a farmer and his dog looking for a lost sheep. The wall is located near to Gratly where Steadman lived but he didn’t make it to the wall on his own steam. Instead he was killed and transported there by someone. Two young lovers, Sally and Kevin, were in a deserted shepherd’s hut nearby and were able to tell the police that a car stopped on the road for about 15 minutes at 12:14 am. Banks and his crew are able to ascertain that Steadman was in the local pub until 8:45 pm. Later Banks learned that Steadman went to visit his friend Penny Cartwright after that and was thrown out by her father around 10 pm. Penny and Harry were just friends although other people in the village thought differently. It doesn’t seem that Harry’s wife Emma was one of them though. Banks is having a hard time establishing a motive for Steadman’s murder. Everyone claims he was well liked and that he didn’t have any enemies. His wife might have the strongest motive since she stood to inherit his sizable estate but she was watching TV with a neighbour all evening. She thought he was off with his friend and publisher doing research for a book on industrial archeology of the region. Banks had to break the news of his death to her. Banks continues to beat the bushes but it isn’t until Sally goes missing and is then found dead that the pieces start to fit together.
I love the descriptions of the Yorkshire countryside and the small villages peppered throughout it. Someday I think I will have to be one of those annoying tourists that clutter up the landscape.
It seems
And it’s precisely that attitude that attracts me to Robinson’s Inspector Banks novels. I have always enjoyed a good police procedural and found them to be more satisfying than detective novels by writers who rely on one thrilling scene after another to carry their books to some kind of (usually preposterous) conclusion. For me the best crime fiction writers are those who combine elements of both styles with an emphasis on process over thrill. Thankfully, too, Inspector Banks is a “talker” and several times in A Dedicated Man he explains his crime solving philosophy to one or another of the locals in great detail.
Robinson first tells the reader something that Banks learned the hard way:
“Banks knew from experience that once a murder investigation begins there is no stopping and little slowing down even for family life. The crime invades mealtimes, ablutions, and sleep; it dominates conversation and puts up an invisible barrier between the investigator and his family.”
There’s also this from Robinson explaining the inspector’s mindset:
“Banks also liked the feeling of being an outsider. Not a stranger, as he had been among the anonymous, international crowds of London, but an outsider. He knew he always would be no matter how deep he put his roots.” (In Yorkshire)
In a revealing conversation with a crime novelist who also is a suspect in the murder investigation, Banks says this:
“In writing, yes. In fiction. But in real life, I’m not so sure. It’d be a damn sight easier if I knew who the criminal was without having to write the whole book and make all the mistakes along the way.”
Later on when another suspect asks if he is close to solving the murder, he says:
“I can’t see it if I am, but detection doesn’t work like that anyway. It’s not a matter of getting closer like a zoom lens, but of getting enough bits and pieces to transform chaos into a recognizable pattern…But you can’t predict when that moment will come. It could be in the next ten seconds or the next ten years. You don’t know what the pattern will look like when it’s there, so you might not even recognize it at first. But soon enough you’ll know you’ve got a design and not just a filing cabinet full of odds and sods.”
I really like Chief Inspector Alan Banks. He may be a bit of a plodder, but he’s not going to quit before he gets the job done. So if police procedurals are for you, I think that author Peter Robinson just may be your guy. And knowing that I have something like 22 more Inspector Banks novels to enjoy makes me happy (hopefully there are many more to come yet).
As posted on Book Chase: bookcase.blogpsot.com
A retired archeologist is murdered and Banks investigates,
Found Bank’s preoccupation with a pipe dull & time wasting. The characters all appeared to be in their late fifties, then it became apparent they
Couldn’t quite understand why Robinson makes his detective a married man with children. They barely get walk-on parts.
Then suddenly Banks put all the pieces together. The mystery was wrapped up rapidly, and Poirot-like he gives a long tell-not-show explanation to the once-suspects.
Harry
Alan Banks suspects from the beginning that there is something under all the rumors but even he gets surprised when the truth starts emerging. He spends the novel trying to stick to his decision to stop smoking cigarettes and instead take to a pipe (it is 1988 after all - these days, it would have been vaping I guess although then the Sherlock Holmes connection would be lost) and that makes him think of Holmes and his usual motto - eliminate the impossible and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. That is what ends up solving the case - but not before more lives are lost and a lot of happy memories shattered.
The novel is dated - it was written in 1988 and it was a different world back then. On the other hand it is too new to be different enough to be interesting because of that. As such, it has its problems - you need to keep in mind when the book is written or the blatant sexism may make you want to stop reading. But then it is normal for books written in a different time - the dales of England in the late 80s may as well be a different world sometimes.
It is not a great novel but it is a decent one and I enjoy the series.
Banks, newly transferred from London to a rural part of England, is still a relatively young man whom young women find
Also unlike most of the later mysteries in the series, there is just one case to occupy his time, at least until a teenage girl disappears. The disappearance may or may not be related to the murder of a scholarly man whom everybody seemed to like and nobody seemed to have any reason to kill. Yet someone did murder Harry Steadman.
Because there seems to be no motive to be found in the present, Banks explores the past, old relationships and especially old love affairs. Where does the secret lie?
Had I read “A Dedicated Man” back in 1988 I think I might have liked it better than I do now, for now I have Robinson's later work to compare it with, and the author has improved with time. The ending fits the model of the traditional murder mystery, but seems a bit forced and is not as convincing as the conclusions of most of his later novels that are modeled more on actual police work.