‘Bad Boy’ by Peter Robinson

Reviewed by Ron Robinson

Mystery writer Peter Robinson has no distinguishing features. Meeting him I found he was neither flashy nor animated. More of a good listener. Not very far removed from his Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks. Bad Boy, now in an oversize paperback, is the thirteenth in the series. Set mainly in the Yorkshire Dales, Banks doesn’t make an appearance until part way through the novel. He’s been on a rest and recreation holiday in America. Not surprising since his career and private life have been in upheaval for the last few books. The bad boy of the title, Jaff, is that most seductive of lovers. Very generous and attentive when he’s present, alluring in appearance though often absent, with a hint of danger about him. Banks’ daughter Tracy is drawn to him. With her own life seemingly on hold– her exam marks were poor and she’s treading water working at a Waterstone’s bookstore, estranged from her father, and angry at his seeming attention to her brother, she’s drawn to her room mate Erin’s boyfriend.

Erin’s angry response is to sneak Jaff’s handgun to her father’s house setting in motion a series of widening unpleasantness. In England this is more than a misdemeanor; simple possession is punishable by five years in jail. I mention this because as in all of the series there is an element of police procedural. Robinson credits the professionals for their help and he says in an interview about Bad Boy, “It’s more of a thriller I think, than a whodunnit. It’s a novel of pursuit.”

The pursuit begins when Tracy warns Jaff what has happened and he begins to contact his criminal connections to help him escape the country. This would seem extreme except we learn the gun has a history. A bit like W.W. Jacobs’s short story “The Monkey’s Paw”. All who touch it will be affected.

Tracy goes on the run with Jaff. At first it’s an adventure and exciting, but then,

Tracy went into the kitchen. She leaned up against the fridge and put her head in her hands. The weed was misting up her brain. She needed to pull herself together. What was going on? What did she think she was doing? Here was good little Tracy, the apple of her daddy’s eye, practically breaking into his house drinking his best booze, making a mess with a man she barely knew, who had just told her that her best friend had stolen his gun and run away with it. How had she got mixed up in all this? It was all so confusing.

Indeed the mystery novel has come a long way since Poe and Doyle put pen to paper. Ratiocination was expanded to include the “cozy,” Agatha Christie’s beloved creation that guaranteed there would always be a little patch of England that never was. The Americans Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler brought the talk heard on the street onto the page, with Hammett giving murder “back to those who commit it for reasons,” as Chandler put it, while he gave us the bad boy who does good, for “down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.”

The wily Robinson has put his chips on every number on the roulette table. The empty landscape of the Yorkshire Dales serves as a character and a travelogue with its moors. The police procedural gets its fair dues with Banks’s unwillingness to do things by the book adding tension. Sexual politics on the force is raised. There’s enough psychology to satisfy the amateur shrink in all of us. The villain, Jaff, feels put upon because of his race, and treatment. And CSI fans will recognize the work the lab provides pointing the finger of guilt.

Robinson revisits his main character’s hobbies– his love for music is referred to several times, as well as his taste in good whiskey. His on again off again relationship with DI Annie Cabbot is worked in as are several other characters to serve as thread to hang a storyline on in the next Banks mystery, including his daughter’s deliberate lying to him. The chief villain is seemingly a pillar of the community and is brought to justice by Banks’s bulldog determination.

And although Robinson has the British bulldog approach, being part Canadian, he offers the hope that peace order and good government will prevail. The quintessential mystery outcome is the result– order is restored. Not a bad feeling to engender as the English riots fade.

Banks fans will now have to wait a while for the next one to come off the assembly line. That’s because Robinson’s next novel, Before the Poison Pen, doesn’t include him. It’s set in World War Two with a possible miscarriage of justice being unearthed 60 years later. It has a Canadian publication date of October.

Bad Boy will satisfy the fans, and there’s no denying the careful plotting, even if it occasionally feels plodding. Others may feel there are too many ingredients, cancelling each other out when they want one strong taste in their mouths.