Sleeping in the Ground: An Inspector Banks Novel

The mass shooting of a wedding party outside a Yorkshire church propels bestseller Robinson’s intriguing but slow-burning 24th novel featuring Det. Supt. Alan Banks (after 2016’s When the Music’s Over). In the aftermath, three people are dead, including the bride, and two more later succumb to their wounds. Banks bristles a bit when his boss brings in a profiler, especially when he discovers that it’s forensic psychologist Jenny Fuller, for whom he used to hold a torch. Together, Fuller, Banks, and Banks’s lead detective, Det. Sgt. Annie Cabbot, try to paint a picture of the gunman, but even when they come up with a credible suspect, the discovery only leads to a maze of further possibilities, including motives that have their start decades earlier in connection to another crime. The reader may feel that Banks is too much on the periphery, dealing with the loss of a long-ago lover, as the complex story unfolds around him, but he’s still a mighty force to be reckoned with in crime fiction. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary. (Aug.)