Before the Poison

Bring back Alan Banks!  As a regular reader of Peter Robinson's book, I feel as if I know Alan Banks personally.   He's a typical detective, somewhat cranky, sometimes morose, a maverick who never endears himself to his superiors, but solves cases his own way.

Sadly, Alan Banks is absent from Before the Poison,  I can imagine Robinson might be tired of Banks.  After all, he has a steady diet of the character, while we readers only bump into him once in a while.  However, while Robinson might be tired of Banks, I wasn't.

I wonder if Robinson is caving in to the current fascination with spirits, by having his main protagonist, Chris Lowndes, a recent widower, experience sightings of a ghost in the isolated house he has rented in northern England.  Robinson always has lots of references to music in his books, and in this one there's lots of music, as Lowndes is a composer.

This is a pretty good book, but not nearly as good as previous Robinson works.