Peter Robinson

Offers two novellas and a number of short stories--some of which feature the author's popular character, Inspector Alan Banks--in a collection that explores the disparate motives that move people to harm one another.

Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks must face his most challenging and personal case yet. A distraught woman arrives at the Eastvale police station desperate to speak to Banks. Since he's away on holiday, his partner, Annie Cabbot, steps in. The woman tells Annie that she's found a loaded gun hidden in the bedroom of her daughter, Erin--a punishable offense under English law. When an armed response team breaks into the house to retrieve the weapon,...

"When property developer Connor Clive Blaydon is found dead, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks and his Yorkshire team dive into the investigation. As luck would have it, someone had installed a cache of spy-cams all around his luxurious home. The team hope that they'll find answers, and the culprit, among the video recordings. Instead of discovering Connor's murderer, however, the grainy and blurred footage reveals another crime: a brutal rape....

One phone call from a concerned neighbor has inadvertently led police to Terence Payne, the elusive serial killer known only as "Chameleon." Now Payne is in custody, perhaps dying, and a long nightmare appears to be over at last. But is it?

"In Eastvale, a young Middle Eastern boy is found dead, his body stuffed in a wheelbarrow on the East Side Estate. Detective Superintendent Banks and his team know they must tread carefully to solve this sensitive case. But tensions rise when they learn that the victim was stabbed somewhere else and dumped. Who is the boy, and where did he come from? Then, in a decayed area of Eastvale scheduled for redevelopment, a heroin addict is found dead. Was...