The seventh installment of Robinson's Inspector Banks series.

One May evening, two masked gunmen tie up Alison Rothwell and her mother, take Keith Rothwell, a local accountant, to the garage of his isolated Yorkshire Dales farmhouse, and blow his head off with a shotgun. Why? This is the question Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks has to ask as he sifts through Rothwell's life. Rothwell was generally known in the area as a mild-mannered, dull sort of person, but even a cursory investigation raises more questions than answers. When Banks's old sparring partner, DS Richard "Dirty Dick" Burgess, turns up from the Yard, the case takes yet another unexpected twist, and Banks finds himself racing against time as the killers seem to be dogging his footsteps. Only after he pits his job against his sense of justice does he discover the truth. And the truth leads him to one of the most difficult decisions of his career.

Peter Robinson's profile page

PETER ROBINSON was a beloved crime novelist whose work spanned thirty-five years. His final novel, Standing In the Shadows, is the twenty-eighth installment in the Inspector Banks series. His critically acclaimed books have won numerous awards in Britain, the United States, and Europe, and are published in translation all over the world. He also wrote two collections of short stories, and three stand-alone novels, including the #1 bestseller Before the Poison, winner of the Arthur Ellis Award, Sweden's Golden Crowbar Award, and the Dilys Award given by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. In 2020, Robinson was presented with the Grand Master Award by the Crime Writers of Canada. Several Inspector Banks novels have been adapted for television by ITV and have appeared on PBS. Peter, who grew up in the United Kingdom, lived with his wife, Sheila Halladay, in Toronto, Ontario, and Richmond, Yorkshire. Visit www.inspectorbanks.com.

"A dark, unsettling story. . . . Robinson has done his usual impressive job." —The New York Times
"Consummately crafted. . . . High quality crime fiction from one of Canada's top crime writers." —Toronto Star
"Mr. Robinson has done his usual impressive job of pushing a plot forward by means of detailed police procedures and exacting character analysis. Not even the dead escape his unrelenting scrutiny." —New York Times Book Review
"Excellent, well-paced." —Yorkshire Post
"Exceptionally good. . . . As usual, Robinson provides a fine cast of characters. . . . He also serves up as seamless a plot as one can find anywhere." —The Globe and Mail
"Robinson's seventh procedural maintains the sterling consistency of Wednesday's Child (1994) and all the others." —Kirkus Reviews