Last week, I read Wednesday’s Child, completing the set of Peter Robinson’s “Inspector Alan Banks” corpus. Chronologically it comes about mid-series but, as I’ve mentioned before, I rely on a lot on borrowed books and so have to take them in whatever order they come.

It’s probably among my favourites of the fifteen books in the main series (plus the short story collection that features a couple more Banks items) although they’ve all been at least good to excellent. I remember not being keen on certain points in Dry Bones that Dream (including mystery writers among the cast always seems a rather forced conceit to me) and it wasn’t as chilling as Aftermath (the bleakest but also a contender for one of the best) but Wednesday’s Child was a good note to end on.

That is to say, to end on for now, as there’s no sign that Inspector Banks is ready to be put out to pasture. Indeed, as a fictional character, he’s doing well and even has his own website. However, it’s probably going to be the best part of a year or more before there’s another novel to track down. In the meanwhile, I’ll have to purse some of Robinson’s other writings, mine out series by other favourite authors, discover new writers (or, at least, writers new to me) and perhaps even, after a respectful period of time, dive into some re-reading from Bank’s recorded career.

Tags: Inspector Alan Banks, Peter Robinson, crime fiction, reading