Peter Robinson

Offers two novellas and a number of short stories--some of which feature the author's popular character, Inspector Alan Banks--in a collection that explores the disparate motives that move people to harm one another.

"When property developer Connor Clive Blaydon is found dead, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks and his Yorkshire team dive into the investigation. As luck would have it, someone had installed a cache of spy-cams all around his luxurious home. The team hope that they'll find answers, and the culprit, among the video recordings. Instead of discovering Connor's murderer, however, the grainy and blurred footage reveals another crime: a brutal rape....

"In Eastvale, a young Middle Eastern boy is found dead, his body stuffed in a wheelbarrow on the East Side Estate. Detective Superintendent Banks and his team know they must tread carefully to solve this sensitive case. But tensions rise when they learn that the victim was stabbed somewhere else and dumped. Who is the boy, and where did he come from? Then, in a decayed area of Eastvale scheduled for redevelopment, a heroin addict is found dead. Was...

Investigating a dual arson case that has claimed three lives on an English canal, Detective Inspector Banks teams up with fellow investigator Annie Cabot and discovers that the victims are linked to an art forgery operation.

"As Banks and his team follow what few clues they have, desperate to find the missing boy, who holds the key to the puzzle, they find themselves branching out in different directions. As the end game becomes a race against time, even Banks's team isn't safe from the rage of the hunted animal"--

"Two women. Two crimes. The first is a poet claiming she was assaulted decades earlier by a man now regarded as one of the country's national treasures. And the second is a girl found on a remote roadside, her body broken, her life snuffed out. For Alan Banks, newly promoted to Detective Superintendent, the first case rips a tunnel into long-ago days of innocence and discovery, of music and light. And in the victim, he sees an opportunity for magic...

"In November 1980, Nick Hartley returns home from a university lecture to find his house crawling with police. His ex-girlfriend, Alice Poole, has been found murdered, and her new boyfriend Mark Woodcroft is missing. Nick is the prime suspect. The case quickly goes cold, but Nick cannot let it go. He embarks on a career in investigative journalism, determined to find Alice's murderer--but his obsession leads him down a dangerous path. Decades later,...

Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks must face his most challenging and personal case yet. A distraught woman arrives at the Eastvale police station desperate to speak to Banks. Since he's away on holiday, his partner, Annie Cabbot, steps in. The woman tells Annie that she's found a loaded gun hidden in the bedroom of her daughter, Erin--a punishable offense under English law. When an armed response team breaks into the house to retrieve the weapon,...

One phone call from a concerned neighbor has inadvertently led police to Terence Payne, the elusive serial killer known only as "Chameleon." Now Payne is in custody, perhaps dying, and a long nightmare appears to be over at last. But is it?