Peter Robinson Bad Boy
It may not always be obvious, but the main justification for the amount of time and effort that goes into this website is to give Hughesy the chance to recall what he's drunk, read and listened to recently, and I had a forceful reminder of that about a third of the way into Bad Boy, the latest in the extensive (eighteen stories before this one) Inspector Banks series by Peter Robinson.
I've often suggested that one of the main advantages of writing a series that uses the same characters is the chance it gives the author to use the framework of ongoing interpersonal relationships as one of the bases you can build a plot around.
I'm the first to admit that Hughesy's memory isn't what it was, and is a fair bit short of what it could and definitely should be. It's not that long since I read All the Colours of Darkness (the preceding novel in the series) but less than twelve months later I don't have much more than a vague general notion of the plot line.
Under normal circumstances I'd be heading somewhere around here on the website to check the details, but for some reason (presumably the presumption that these things could wait until I embarked on the volume by volume recount that I've done for a couple of my other favourite authors) I'd failed to write it up.
Part of the issue that's going to confront the author who's penning the latest in a series is the amount of back story to filter into the narrative. How much space should you devote to explaining who's who, what's what and how things have ended up the way they are at this point in the series?
The devoted fan who's been aboard for a while, is, of course, going to look at such details with a yeah, well we know all that while someone encountering the characters for the first time may well be scratching their heads and wondering who are these people?
That short term memory issue and lack of a reminder came into play this time around because the events from All The Colours of Darkness and developments further back in the series are significant in the developing plot of Bad Boy.
Robinson's a class act, and I found enough back story scattered through Bad Boy to fill in the gaps without getting in the way of the story.
The abrupt termination of Banks' latest relationship and other events from All The Colours of Darkness, son Brian's success with his band (The Blue Lamps) and ongoing tensions between Banks' colleagues at Eastvale are all elements in this latest story, which starts with Banks overseas on stress leave when his former next-door neighbour arrives at Eastvale Police Station.
A distraught Juliet Doyle is there looking for her ex-neighbour after finding a loaded unregistered hand gun hidden in her daughter Erin's bedroom. She's expecting Alan will know what to do about it, and will be able to sort things out quietly and without much fuss. Unfortunately he's not there, there are procedures to be followed, and the train of events runs off the rails rapidly when an armed response team breaks into the house to retrieve the weapon and a man dies after being tasered by a confused police officer.
The fallout from the incident spreads rapidly, and police search Erin's until a couple of days ago residence, which she happens to share with Banks' daughter Tracy, who's now calling herself Francesca as she tries to deal with some of her own issues.
That part of the back story gets sketched in efficiently. Tracy and childhood best friend Erin drink and do drugs, her academic career hasn’t worked out the way it was supposed to, and she feels overshadowed in her father's affections by her successful musician brother. At a club in Leeds, heavily under the weather, Tracy kisses Erin’s boyfriend Jaff, which predictably triggers the row that has Erin taking herself back home and taking something of Jaff's with her.
The something is, of course, the weapon, and the police search the shared house in Leeds looking for further evidence about the circumstances surrounding a case where the daughter's not saying anything to explain things.
There's the possibility that one of them may have twigged to the presence of Banks' daughter in the house, but she's not there when the raid happens, she's calling herself another name and she's got a touch of the hots for the house-mate's boyfriend.
Returning home after work to discover that the place has been raided and the third occupant, who was home at the time, has flushed away the dope stash as soon as the cops were off the scene, I guess Tracy/Francesca was always going to head over and warn Jaff, triggering a manhunt that's complicated by her decision to use her father's isolated house as a temporary bolt hole.
From there, the non-Banks family back story unfolds fairly rapidly. Jaff McCready turns out to be a very nasty piece of work indeed, with connections to criminals who aren't inclined to take things lightly, particularly when Jaff's gone missing with cash and drugs belonging to them after failing to dispose of a gun with the boss' fingerprints on the magazine.
Annie Cabbot, having offered to water Banks' pot plants while he's away but preoccupied with work matters, turns up at the cottage, gets shot for her trouble and is fighting for her life when Banks arrives back at Heathrow to be whisked aside by Dirty Dick Burgess at Immigration and updated about recent events.
Thrust into the middle of complicated, separate but intertwined cases, Banks needs to negotiate his way through developing events, something that isn't going to be a cakewalk, given the presence of a Professional Standards investigation into the death of his former neighbour.
It works out in the end, of course. It always does.
But the way it works out leaves Robinson with interesting possibilities for whatever comes next, given the significant physical and psychological scarring that's bound to have affected those who've got too close to this particular Bad Boy and his associates.
Another well-crafted cracker in an excellent series.