Bad Boy: DCI Banks 19

Fans of Peter Robinson's series featuring Inspector Alan Banks will be interested to know he has written another.

Banks has gone on a vacation to the United States. In his absence, horrors take place. Bank's daughter, Tracy, gets involved with a local charmer. Jaff is the son of the local bookie and a gorgeous Bollywood Indian actress. He dabbles at the fringes of mob activity; a little money laundering, a little drug dealing. He is charming and good-looking and the boyfriend of Tracy's best friend, Erin. When Erin gets into police trouble by taking Jaff's gun, Tracy goes to warn him and ends up going off with him.

What seems like a lark at first and a chance to get to know Jaff better turns into a nightmare as she does just that, gets to know him better. For Jaff is a true bad boy; narcissistic, ready to harm anyone who gets between him and anything he desires. Tracy goes from a willing participant to a hostage as the situation gets more and more serious. Inspector Banks returns home to find a crisis with his daughter in danger. Can he resolve things and save her life?

Peter Robinson and his Inspector Banks series are well-known and respected. He has been a finalist for the Los Angles Times Book Prize, a "Best Book of the Year" recipient by Publisher's Weekly, a "Notable Book" winner by the New York Times and a "Page Turner Of The Week" winner by People magazine. Robinson has won numerous prizes including the Edgar Award, the Anthony Award and the Grand Prix de litterature Policiere. This book, although the latest in a series, stands alone, as it was the first of Robinson's books that I'd read. This book is recommended for mystery lovers who enjoy police procedurals and an inside look at how police forces really work.

Brief summary, no spoilers.

I am an unabashed Peter Robinson fan and I was looking forward to this novel. It does not disappoint, although it is not my favorite book by this author.

The facts are the following - Inspector Banks is on holiday in America, while his partner (and ex-lover) Annie Cabbot receives a visitor named Julia Doyle. The woman is a former neighbor of Inspector Banks, and she wants to see him to report that her daughter Erin has recently moved home and Julia and her husband found a gun in Erin's belongings. Since it is a prison sentence to have an unlicensed gun in the U.K., this is a big deal. Annie consults with coworkers, and a decision is made to call in reinforcements for a possible forced entry. If this seems like overkill, it is. And it proves to be disastrous.

Meanwhile, Banks' troubled daughter Tracy had been a roommate of Erin's. Tracy had developed a crush on Erin's bad-news boyfriend named "Jaff". The feeling is reciprocated, and when we find out just what a bad boy Jaffe is you can just can see that this is going to lead to big trouble for everyone.

Banks comes back from vacation to deal with the fallout. He needs to find and save his daughter Tracy, and deal with a worrisome situation involving Annie as well.

This story is pretty straightforward. It's of particular interest to fans of this series because we learn more about Tracy and her relationship with her father. There is also a cliffhanger of sorts, involving Annie, the outcome of which could easily be part of a future book in the series. Other than that, there was nothing that made this novel stand out. I would not recommend it to someone who has not read this author before, both because it's better to have some understanding of Banks' past, and because the story and denouement are just okay.

Still, recommended. Peter Robinson is a wonderful writer, who knows how to write dialogue and set the scene. I am looking forward to the next book in the series.

One of the most interesting aspects of BAD BOY is the insight it provides into the way firearms are treated in the UK compared to America. A mother finds a handgun among her daughter's belongings and reports it to the police, hoping that the situation might be handled discreetly. However, guns in private hands are scarce in England--even most police aren't armed. Illegal possession of a firearm is punishable by a mandatory five year prison term.

Authorized Firearms Officers, members of the Armed Response Team, are called in and the home is stormed in much the same way that drug labs are stormed in the US. One resident offers token resistance to the officers and is tasered. Unfortunately, he has a weak heart and dies, triggering an investigation of the way the situation was handled.

The gun has a long and dark history, having been passed from hand to hand and used in the commission of a homicide. It was stolen by the daughter in a fit of pique after her boyfriend messed around with her flatmate, who happens to be DCI Banks' twenty-four year old daughter, Tracy. When the news breaks, Jaff, her boyfriend--the so-called "bad boy"--needs to get off the grid. Tracy, who is smitten with the charming, exotic young man, and who doesn't know how corrupt Jaff is, offers to help. She starts out as a willing co-conspirator, making one bad choice after another until she's in so deep that she can't find a way out.

The book's success depends on a readers' willingness to buy into Tracy's actions. She seems to be old enough to know better, but there are countless cases of people who make stupid decisions. She has opportunities to escape, but Jaff's threats paralyze her. Her relationship with him changes from collaborator to hostage.

Banks is out of the picture for a large section of the book, on "gardening leave" in America, which gives Robinson a chance to examine the US from an outsider's perspective. Banks is especially bemused by how friendly people in the service industry are in America. "A grunt is the most likely response to a hello" in a British pub, he muses. He finishes off his vacation with a one-night stand with a woman he meets at a wine tasting. When he returns to England, he has to deal with the situation both as a cop and a father.

The book is hampered by a number of stereotypes. The gay officer from the Armed Response Team is in particular poorly handled by Robinson. She's a stock character in a serious position who behaves illogically and emotionally. Antagonism between the cops and internal affairs (called Professional Standards in the UK) has been done to death, and Superintendent Chambers is overzealous in his determination to fit up a cop, regardless of the facts. He even considers condemning Banks for how he might have handled the handgun report if he'd been present, instead of several thousand miles away.

Also, for people who haven't read the preceding two or three books, certain recent events in Banks' life that are alluded to may give rise to some confusion. Though events move forward with a certain inevitability, the book seems to lack momentum. It's altogether too easy to put down.

Reason for Reading: Next in the series

Peter Robinson is always a character writer. The identities and motivators of his main characters are an important role in each of his novels and each character has developed through the books, especially Inspector Banks who has been with the series for all nineteen novels. Bad Boys relies heavily on the personal stories of the main characters plot wise. There is a crime, a couple really, and they all involve Inspector Banks at a personal level. Enemies from the past show up, an old cold case comes up again, friends are hurt, his home has become a crime scene and his daughter disappears.

I enjoyed this book, more so than the last one that bothered me with its spy emphasis but it still is not up to other books I have easily rated 5 stars. One of the reasons I love Peter Davidson is his characterization, Inspector Banks is a deep person with many layers who has changed over time and is a welcome familiar friend to meet on the page. Secondary characters are also explored with full detail and continuing storylines. My main problem with Bad Boys is that it is not a "whodunit" in any shape or form. We know all about who did everything; the reader sees the story unfold from multiple views and is wiser than the police on their trail to catch the culprit whom even the police figure out who it is very early on, taking away one of my favourite aspects of the genre.

But, it was still a good read. I was turning pages quickly and finished the book over two days. We get a glimpse into the party life of average 20-something year olds, the high-life of drug trafficking and the low-life of drug trafficking, what happens to those who tick off The Boss and mostly the book is a long chase to capture the culprit before someone close to DCI Banks loses their life to a very unstable man. There are also a couple of twists and one shocker which is tidied up, to a point, by the end but leaves a familiar character's future hanging in the air. Fans who have grown to love Banks, his kids, Annie, Winsome, and the rest of the gang will enjoy the story but newcomers to the series should certainly not start here as I think they may come away disappointed at the lack of a gritty murder mystery, which can be found in other books in the series.

(Disclaimer: A free copy of this book was received from the store Vine in exchange for an honest review.)

Bad Boy by Peter Robinson is a strong addition to his Alan Banks series. A former neighbor shows up at Banks's office to tell him that her daughter has come home for a visit and has brought a gun. As Banks is on vacation in America, Annie Cabot and Detective Superintendent Catherine Gervaise meet with the woman, and all hell breaks loose. Gervaise and Cabot follow procedure and send some Authorized Firearm Officers and an Armed Response Vehicle thundering up to the woman's house where they break the door down and zap the woman's elderly husband with a stun gun, not knowing that he has a heart condition. It may seem difficult for those of us in the United States to comprehend this level of reaction to the possession of a firearm, but with the anti-gun laws in England, it appears this is not too terribly far fetched.

Gervaise and Cabot try to steer clear of the resulting furor after the man dies from the stun gun assault to concentrate on finding out where the gun came from. In the meantime, Banks is in the United States, wending his way through the desert and examining his life after the breakdown of his latest romance and the unease left from his last case in which he was drawn into a national security investigation.(See All the Colors of Darkness (Inspector Banks Mysteries)) When Banks returns home, he is stunned to be met at the airport and told that Annie Cabot is near death from a gunshot wound and that his daughter is missing and possibly involved in Annie's shooting.

This is a very strong, character driven novel, exploring the relationships between Banks and his children, Banks and Annie, and Banks and the other women in his life. Banks's daughter, Tracy, at first is attracted to her best friend's boyfriend, Jaff and goes to warn him about the possible fallout from her friend taking his gun. She runs off with him almost as a lark and takes him to hide at her father's cottage partly as an act of rebellion against her father, who she thinks doesn't love her as much as he loves her brother. However, she soon gets caught up in more than she bargained for as her role changes from ally and accessory, to being Jaff's prisoner and hostage.

Robinson shows an uncanny insight into the minds of the young women who are attracted to the bad boys of the world. The slow progression as Jaff and Tracy's relationship changes is masterfully done-- Jaff's violent turns of anger at first shock Tracy but his subsequent acts of generosity and tenderness calm her fears and draw her more deeply into his power. This is a very well done novel, and for the last third I was completely unable to put it down. If All the Colors of Darkness left me feeling vaguely unsettled, Bad Boy leaves me feeling very satisfied with the resolution and eager to read the next book in the series.

DCI Alan Banks, on leave from the Major Crimes Unit of the Western Area Headquarters in Eastvale, is thoroughly enjoying his visit to the United States, so he isn't there when his former neighbor, Juliet Doyle, arrives at the police station seeking his help over what to do about a gun she has found in her daughter's bedroom. Instead, DI Annie Cabot interviews Mrs. Doyle and that, as they say, makes all the difference.

Jaff McCready, the titular bad boy of this story, is the son of a wealthy Englishman and successful Bollywood actress. He desperately wants to be a player in the organized crime operation headed by "The Farmer," who sees him as a possible to successor to his empire. Jaff has been dating Erin Doyle, the childhood friend and current roommate of Banks's daughter, Tracy. When Erin catches Jaff kissing Tracy on the dance floor, she decides to get even by stealing a gun from Jaff's apartment--a gun Jaff was instructed by the Farmer to destroy--and hiding it in her old bedroom at her parents' house where she has retreated to lick her wounds. Once her mother discovers the weapon and reports her daughter to the police, all hell breaks loose beginning with a botched police raid on the Doyle's home. Jaff takes Tracy hostage as he flees both the police and the wrath of The Farmer, who wants the drugs and cash Jaff has taken returned and Jaff silenced. When Banks arrives back from America, he finds the entire police force trying to locate Jaff and Tracy. He must use all his mental and physical resources to try to save his daughter.

Whether or not you have read any previous Inspector Banks novels, you will thoroughly enjoy "Bad Boy," Peter Robinson's latest offering in this popular British crime series. Banks makes a sympathetic if somewhat flawed hero--unlucky in love, sometimes too wrapped up in his job, and not afraid to break a few rules to get results. Tracy also comes across as real--the "good girl" who wants to be noticed and loved by her father. Although the constant drip of brand names seems a bit too obvious at times, the various music titles and artists mentioned make for a silent but interesting soundtrack to this great read.

(This review is based on a copy provided by the publisher through an Early Review program.)

This is Peter Robinson's nineteenth crime novel and his twentieth book. Most feature Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks, of the Eastvale police department. The Inspector Banks novels are all satisfying and the best of them are quite good. Bad Boy is one of the quite good ones.

It starts with Banks away from work. A woman comes to the police station to ask his help in recovering a loaded pistol from her daughter's room. In Banks's absence, former lover and still colleague and ally Annie Cabbot steps in. Things go seriously wrong in the police attempt to recover the gun. An innocent man dies and the police department is under public scrutiny. More seriously, Banks's daughter Tracy becomes involved. A friend of the girl with the gun, she heads off to warn the girl's boyfriend that the police are looking for where the girl got the gun. Tracy's going through a bad time. She got an unsatisfactory Second at the university, is working a nothing job and feels abandoned by her parents, especially good old Dad. She's mucked up her hair, she's got a stud above one eyebrow and another on her lip, and her present mood, her friend's dangerous boyfriend looks appealing. But then things go seriously bad.

By the time Banks returns from his vacation, Annie is in the hospital with two gun wounds. Her doctor can't say whether she will survive. Tracy is missing, held hostage by a very, very bad boy named Jaff, who is on the run from not only the police but the homicidal minions of his former boss. It's up to Banks to resolve things and he does in an unpredictable but believable finale. The chase is seen from both sides -Tracy's as Jaff's hostage and Banks as their pursuer- and it keeps your attention every page of the way. I've felt lately that some of Robinson's most recent thrillers lagged a bit but this one is a winner from the first page on. As always, Banks is an appealing hero -a bit of a renegade in the ordered world of a big city police department but he gets results.

In "Bad Boy," Peter Robinson's nineteenth in his Inspector Alan Bates series, the Detective Chief Inspector has drifted away from his twenty-four-year old daughter Tracy, and has concentrated more on his own problems. Upset by the fact she never achieved much in college or in a job, she has started to veer into the fast lane of booze, drugs, and casual sex. Her childhood girlfriend-roommate Erin has been dating a "bad boy," Jaff, an Anglo-Indian who has become involved in drugs and guns. Tracy upsets Erin when she kisses Jaff. Erin gets teed off, fights with Jaff, and in a snit steals a gun from him.
Erin runs back home; her mother finds the gun. Knowing Banks as a former neighbor, she goes to him for help; he's away so Annie Cabbott takes over. A bungled police raid ends with the death of Erin's father.
Meanwhile Tracy runs off with Jaff, a coke-head, who procures another gun, and she eventually becomes his hostage and a fugitive. When Tracy brings Jaff to her father's cottage (dad is away in America), trouble ensues when Annie on her own finds the pair there. A mob figure and his henchmen get involved
This plot has many twists and turns, the melodramatic story takes over, and things get convoluted. The story is well-done to a point--but it relies heavily on a series of mis-cues. Whenever British crime writers rely on mob figures to move the story, the story often takes on a level of inauthenticity. Over the years Robinson has been getting better at characterization; earlier there was a certain soap opera feel about his characters and Banks's family life.
Peter Robinson always concocts a good yarn, and this one is no exception. It's involved but involving.

This is the first US edition of an Inspector Banks novel I've owned. One of the first of the Alan Banks I read, I got at my local library, and like with most US editions of books from Great Britain or Eire, US editors had screwed it up....so as a rule I stay away from US editions. Surprisingly, author Peter Robinson actually took the time to recognize and thank his proofreaders. Nice!(And an excellent job they did, also) No changes to UK grammar or syntax for the US market. That was a pleasant surprise.
Not wanting to give away too much, plot-wise, suffice it to say that as the book opens, Banks is in San Francisco, ending up a holiday across the western US, recovering from his latest broken relationship. With Banks being away, Annie Cabbot is thrust into the lead position when an old neighbor of Banks winds up dead. The least seen member of the cast of the Inspector Banks series comes to the forefront here, his daughter, Tracy. The book is up to Robinson's usual standards, and it comes on the heels of the announcement that Stephen Tompkinson(Father Peter in Ballykissangel - Complete Series One & Two) will be starring in the new TV series. To me, that's an interesting(but odd) choice, although no odder than the choice of Ken Stott and John Hannah in the Inspector Rebus programs.

BTW, I recently had to catch a train home when my car broke down. the only reading material I had at hand was Bad Boy: An Inspector Banks Novel. I re-read it, and if I could, I'd bump my rating up to 4.5 stars. It's really quite good!!

(why does the store's spellcheck program say that the terms and words "Tompkinson", "ballykissangel" and "Robinson's" are misspelt? Or misspelled, since the store doesn't like "misspelt", either.)

I have read all the Inspector Banks detective novels Peter Robinson has written in order of publication. I loved the first novels but admit to being a little disappointed in the last few he has published and BAD BOY doesn't rise too much above the mediocre range either. In this installment Yorkshire based Detective Banks has taken a little vacation to the US (California, Arizona and Utah to be exact) and back in northern England his twenty something daughter Tracy finds herself involved with the very bad boy who lends his name to the title with dangerous consequences. To compound matters Banks' partner and ex love interest Annie is also seriously wounded by the same criminal. I'm not going to give away any spoilers but the resolution is pretty predictable. In BAD BOYS Robinson seemingly wants to explore themes of family/friend loyalty novel but for the most part doesn't follow through with these lofty plans. He also appears to want to teach readers that gun laws in England are much harsher than in the US but is far from subtle in his delivery. If you are a long time fan of Robinson and his usually superior Banks series you will probably want to read this new addition as it is readable and has some entertainment value but this is definitely not a book to introduce newcomers to Peter Robinson and his thrillers.

This latest novel by an excellent writer, Peter Robinson is just not up to his usual very high standards. I have read all his novels over the last twenty years or so and many of them are great! Maybe, it's because we wait so long for Banks to get home and take over the case or that when he does it all happens in a very contrived short time and plot that the reader feels that the plotting is a bit threadbare and contrived or manipulated. Whichever, it comes across as if the reader is short changed and more should have happened or could have happened to his daughter Tracy. Did deadlines to publish or a little boredom creep into the mix? Whatever nothing really that bad happens to Tracy except some nonconsentual sex after much willing sex; and I don't take this lightly. The expert lesbian markswoman is just too contrived and a weak solution to the problem Banks faces. The novel could have been longer and better with more tense plotting and not such a fast and easy ending once Banks is on the scene. Annie and Bank's relationship seems to be headed somewhere again. A fair read but, not Robinson's best.

Tracy Banks believes her friend Erin Doyle is dating a nasty person Jaff McCready. Erin's mom would agree with that assessment as she finds an illegal gun amongst Erin's possession. She reports this to the Eastvale police.

A charmer, Jaff persuades Tracy to flee the country with him and though she should know better she agrees to go with him. Jaff and Tracy hide in the Yorkshire house of her father Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks while is in the States. Meanwhile Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot leads the investigation into Jaff's whereabouts. Tracy opens up Jaff's suitcase to find it filled drugs, money and a gun. His allure ends for her so he turns ugly holding her hostage even as her dad returns from overseas to find his daughter in danger.

This is an excellent entry in the long running Banks police procedural series even with the lead playing at best a tertiary role (being overseas) in the first half of the novel. Even with the hero away, the story line is fast-paced throughout and when he returns the DCI conflicts between being the father of a hostage and the cop working a hostage situation arises. With an underlying theme of how the British feel about guns (and the gun laws) accentuated by the actions of Erin's mom, Peter Robinson affirms what his fans already know that you can bank on him for a powerful tale.

Harriet Klausner

The Inspector Banks novels have been growing darker of late, and, number 20, Bad Boy, continues the trend in spades. Jaff McCready is one of those handsome charmers who has never developed a conscience, and when Banks' 20-something daughter falls for him, she fails to recognize the warning signs. Banks himself is on holiday in California, where he has been doing some much needed soul searching while enjoying the spectacular scenery. He returns to England only to find that his partner and one-time lover, Annie Cabbott, is near death in the hospital, and his daughter is on the run, perhaps as a hostage, with an increasingly desperate Jaff.

It takes the first half of the book to set up the dire situation, which plays out slowly in the second. It is not a tale for the squeamish, with a cast of sociopathic characters and a series of sadistic murders. Banks (himself known as the "bad boy" of his department) and his fellow coppers are forced to resort to some unconventional tactics that place all of their careers in serious jeopardy. Bad Boy is a psychologically suspenseful story in which the tension builds chapter by chapter and never lets up. It will be interesting to learn what becomes of Banks, Annie, et al in Robinson's 21st entry in this series.

Murphy's Law seems to apply to the premise behind this novel. After a well-earned vacation touring the U.S. Southwest and the wonders of LA and San Francisco, DI Banks finds, upon his return to Eastvale, that an old friend has died after police tasered him, Banks' daughter is missing, and everything is in an uncontrolled mess.

It starts when a former neighbor of Banks discovers a gun which had been hidden by her daughter in her bedroom when visiting her parents. The mother visits the police station hoping to discuss the situation with Banks who, unfortunately, is still away. When the police raid the house, the woman's husband dies of a heart attack after the aforementioned taser incident; Banks' daughter, Tracy, infatuated with man who owned the gun (the "bad boy" of the title) warns him of the police inquiries and hides him in her father's cottage. And from that point on, as Banks returns, everything goes downhill.

The chase begins with Tracy's status changing from willing lover to hostage, and Banks and the rest of the police force struggling with the lack of clues as to where the fugitive and his captive are. As usual, Banks doesn't always play by the rules. But then, neither does the bad boy. Another well-written and off-beat story in the series, and highly recommended.

I have read Peter Robinson since his first Alan Banks procedural. As with most long series, the first several were excellent. But then the plots became predictable, the writing stale, and the recurring characters boring. I stopped reading him. When I saw "Bad Boy," I decided that after a several-year hiatus, I would try him again. Unfortunately, that was a mistake.

Robinson's recurring women characters in "Bad Boy" are immature, trite, and badly drawn. You have his partner and former lover Annie Cabot, who continues to carry a torch for her partner, even after nearly two decades. Annie has become childish and her career stalled. She has become less of a strong woman character than she was when the author first introduced her years ago. It is as if Robinson wants Annie to rue the day he had her choose her career over Banks. Banks' daughter, Tracy, hasn't grown up either. She remains thirteen years old even though she is, with this outing, in her mid-twenties. In this day and age, you'd think that a woman that age would at least think twice about going about with a man in his 30s who stashed an illegal gun in his girlfriend's flat. Tracy seems intent on punishing her father, something most kids do in their teens. By their mid-twenties, most are ready to get on with life.

Very quickly, Tracy and Annie began to grate, there were no other characters who were sympathetic so there was really no reason to continue to read the book other than Publishers' Weekly giving the book a starred review. I continued to read wanting to get to the parts that PW's reviewer read that resulted in the starred review. I never found them.

There are just too many very, very good authors writing excellent British procedurals (Charles Todd, Laurie R. King, P.D. James come immediately to mind) to waste time on mediocre authors and their books.

I've always enjoyed Peter Robinson's police procedurals. His Inspector Banks is a nicely drawn character with sufficient complexity to encourage the reader to follow him through his ever-changing life. Yet I finished this feeling distinctly unsatisfied, and rather irritated. Let me try to explain why, without giving away too much.

First, there is no detection to be done: no puzzles to solve, or clues to interpret. The reader has the whole landscape laid out, with little ambiguity: you know what's likely to happen, and it's just a question of whether the police can get there in time. And that is a real uncertainty, because Robinson makes it clear that he's not going to guarantee a happy ending. There's a fair amount of violence here (by Robinson's standards, anyway), and nobody is safe. Failure is a real option, and a very unpleasant one.

Second, this is a police procedural, with the emphasis on "procedural". Try to imagine Hercule Poirot, or Inspector Lestrade, or any of the other famous fictional British sleuths, having to deal with internal inspections, press conferences, paperwork, and the bureaucracy of modern police work. Perhaps their real-life counterparts did, but it was never allowed to intrude on the business of telling a good story and drawing the reader into the web of mystery. Josephine Tey would never have bored her readers with the minutiae of rules of engagement for firearms units, and she would certainly not have bombarded them with acronyms org charts.

Maybe Robinson is trying to make a political point about the state of policing in Britain today, but if so I wish he wouldn't. Or maybe this is the kind of thriller - an extended car chase, if you like, with plenty of violence - that readers want today. Maybe it's written to transfer well to TV or film. In any case, I read detective fiction for the pleasure of complex problem-solving involving the foibles of human nature. That's not on offer in this book.

Peter Robinson is one of my favorite mystery authors and I eagerly await any new books from him. Although I enjoyed reading this, it was not up to par with some of his better books. Actually, this may be one of his worst.

There are several problems with the story. First, I read Inspector Banks books because I like Inspector Banks! He's simply not in this novel enough. He doesn't show up until half way through the book! Second, the plot is...well, boring. I'm sorry, I just don't care all that much about his daughter...she is a frustrating character. Finally, there are some significant plot holes.

I'd recommend skipping this book unless you're a die-hard Banks fan.

As this book begins, DCI Alan Banks is winding up a solo holiday trip in the Western U.S. But his R&R is over from the moment his plane lands at Heathrow. Banks is stunned to learn that his daughter Tracy - always the "good girl," steady, reliable - is literally on the run from the law with a young man named Jaff. Who is a very Bad Boy indeed.

Jaff is attractive, smart, charming, dangerous enough to attract a girl like Tracy without scaring her away - and beneath his smooth exterior a criminal and master manipulator. Tracy, 20-something and having a quiet identity crisis, impulsively offered to take Jaff to hide out for a few days at her dad's vacant cottage near Eastvale. She had no idea then of Jaff's felonious activities. But her romantic little getaway soon went bad, with a vengeance. And she was a hostage to a coke-snorting armed sociopath, on the run from the law, with death and destruction in their wake. While a desperate DCI Banks joined his colleagues on the hunt for Tracy and the Bad Boy.

Although I'm a long-time fan of this series, the plot summary somehow put me off and I was ready to skim through this book. But Robinson's done such a good job with the story that I was hooked into reading it right through. The action starts slowly, with a tragically bungled police raid. I thought, "only in Britain," because the homeowner who died was tasered once by a cop, not blasted by multiple rounds from police guns. It is interesting for an American to see how seriously British law deals with illegal handguns - and apparently it's very difficult to own one legally.

Despite the slow start with all the infighting in the police investigation of the taser death, the book builds momentum. Robinson skillfully sketches some characters, and more deeply explores others, on both sides of the law. The cast of "bad boys" in this tale includes street thugs, entrepreneurs, and University graduates. During the chase, Banks is offered an exquisitely horrible choice for anyone, but particularly a police officer, involving the life of his daughter. In the hands of a lesser author, this could have been just a moral make-weight clunker in the plot; however, Robinson and Banks resolve it gracefully - and on the run, yet.

Not all the threads are tied up as the book ends. There's a cliffhanger involving a main character, and I'm not so sure how things will go for Tracy next.

Twenty-three years ago, this author began a series of detective novels set in the Yorkshire Dales in the north of Britain (a region Londoners traditionally regard as being not far from the edge of the Earth), featuring a prickly, mavericky detective inspector named Alan Banks. He was a sort-of refugee from London himself, facing burnout after a series of physically wearing and emotionally draining cases, and hoping for some kind of redemption Up North. He arrived with a wife and two small children and set about learning the ropes, which were quite different from the South. Even though I'm a "professional" reader, I somehow only discovered the series myself about three years ago and was almost immediately captivated by the character of now DCI Banks and the supporting players, by the author's view of the Dales (he's from there, of course), and by the cases with which the police force of Eastvale and environs have had to deal. Since time moves at a normal rate in this series, I have also watched Banks getting older, his wife becoming dissatisfied with their relationship and moving out, his love life becoming more complex and sometimes impinging on his professional life, his two kids growing up and going off to university and then out on their own, and the world they all knew gradually changing -- and often not for the best. Banks now has a computer, can't live without his mobile, and makes full use of the ubiquitous CCTV cameras that blanket his country. He's been an Acting Superintendent, has built himself a local reputation, and knows the Dales as well as anyone not born there is ever likely to. And he's recently had a couple of personal confrontations with contemporary terrorism.

So, now I've arrived at the present, in Banks's nineteenth outing, and I'm slightly amazed. None of the books in the series has been less than good, most of them are very good, and probably a third are excellent. Though he has wavered occasionally, Robinson has not fallen into the trap of sequelitis. He hasn't gotten tired of his characters or their lives, he hasn't begun sitting back and phoning in his work. Which means he hasn't begun boring his readers. In fact -- again, unlike most authors of series -- he has steadily improved from each book to the next. The characters have become deeper and more nuanced, the dialogue and description has become richer, the plots themselves have become very subtle and multi-layered and now often carry over into subsequent stories. And I find myself slightly annoyed that now, having caught up to Banks's own present, I shall have to wait like everyone else for each year's new novel.

Okay, so much for foreplay. Having recently slogged through some personal and professional trauma, Banks has gone off to the American Southwest on holiday, driving (and walking) through the desert and ending up in San Francisco, which he discovers he loves. (Me, too.) And he finds that he can perhaps find peace within himself, that he can continue to deal with the world. But back in Leeds, things are happening. Tracy Banks, the DCI's daughter, now in her early twenties and recently graduated with a very disappointing 2nd-level degree, has been working as a shop girl and slowly sliding into a questionable and even dangerous lifestyle of clubs and drugs. She was always the hard worker, the good daughter, the strong student, and the apple of her father's eye -- especially compared to her younger brother, Brian, who frustrated their father by leaving school to pursue a career with his guitar. But now Brian is becoming a rock star and Banks, a knowledgeable devotee of almost any sort of music, from opera to The Doors, is frankly thrilled. And Tracy is feeling abandoned. Into her life comes Jaff, a handsome Bangladeshi with money and personality and a posh accent, and very much a "bad boy." (I have to confess, I've never understood the attraction of women to men whom they know are going to treat them badly.) He's been going with Tracy's roommate, Erin, a girl she's known since little-kid-hood, but after a fight, Erin steals a handgun she finds in Jaff's flat and takes it with her to her parents' house. Where her mother finds it, panics, and goes to the police station to seek help from Banks, the old family friend. Only Banks is in California. DI Annie Cabbot, who has been a mainstay for a number of books now -- once Banks's lover, now his partner -- takes the call and refers it to her boss. Because possession of an unregistered firearm is a very, very serious business indeed in Britain and carries a mandatory prison sentence. When the specialists go into retrieve the weapon, everything goes to pot and people die. It's going to be one of those days. Meanwhile, Tracy has gone off to warn Jaff, who immediately goes on the run. The gun, of course, has a history and now he has to get out of the country, fast. And Tracy sets out on what she sees as an adventure with him, not understanding at all what's she's getting herself into, not knowing Jaff has close ties to a very unpleasant figure in Yorkshire organized crime. But she gets a good dose of reality while hiding out at her absent father's cottage when Annie Cabbot is shot. And Banks returns from his holiday to be dropped straight into a nightmare of hostage-taking and endangered loved ones. But he's a bit of a bad boy himself and both his superiors and the reader will be unsure whether he can behave himself under the circumstances. Can he separate his roles as detective and father? The story is gripping as it escalates in an entirely believable way on multiple fronts. And the final resolution is both unexpected and abrupt, and it works. Things appear to be changing yet again for Banks and those around him. As almost always, an excellent book.

Bad Boy by Peter Robinson

Bad Boy by Peter Robinson is a valiant effort to break the formula
that he apparently felt needed breaking but to tell the truth, I have
never felt that his books fell into a mold that required such
drastic action.
Robinson's primary detective, Alan Banks, goes off our pages for the
first chunk of our story to a vacation in the American West and leaves
his daughter to the devices and wiles of the titled "Bad Boy", a
sociopathic narcissist called Jaff. In spite of Tracy's past
experiences as a detectives daughter and all that her so-called
intelligence would lead her to believe, Tracy falls for Jaff and falls
hard. As readers all silently yell, "No, no", don't do it!" to
themselves, Tracy has some kind of icing over her brain cells and
behaves like a befuddled preteen, doing what Jaff wants her to do
until her "A-ha" moment when she discovers her lover's gun! The action
accelerates and if you had planned on falling asleep at a reasonable
hour, you might as well forget it! You won't be able to put this one
down for a couple of chapters at the very least and perhaps more than
that! It is with great relief that we welcome Alan Banks back into the
story although the ladies of the Yorkshire police force do quite well
on their own without him until Det. Insp. Annie Cabbot becomes Jaff's
second hostage. Still, we know that we need Banks and so does Tracy
and Annie. Read and discover for yourself just how late you are able
to read this one! Highly recommended.

A woman comes to the police department in North Yorkshire, requesting Det. Inspector Alan Banks. She's a former neighbor of Banks and wants to report that her daughter somehow got hold of a gun and she found it in her daughter's room.

Since Banks is on vacation, his partner, Annie Christie, takes the case. She reports the crime and a group of firearms authorized police go to the woman's home. Unfortunately, there is an incident at the home.

Banks's daughter, Tracy, hears about the incident and goes to the girl's boyfriend's home to report about the gun being found. In this way, she becomes a part of the situation. The boyfriend, Jaff, tells her he has to hide out and since Tracy's father is away, she offers his home.

The author takes us through the steps of the investigation as we follow the history of the gun and learn more about Jaff who is holding something for a bigger criminal and is in danger from the man and the thugs who work for the man.

The story is well done with sufficient tension to maintain the reader's interest. There are some good surprises and overall they combine for an enjoyable reading experience.

I have read all of Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks books and loved them but this one did not measure up to his usual standard.It starts with a Mother, Juliet Doyle coming in to report that there is a pistol in her daughter's bedroom. All hell breaks loose, the Swat team arrives at her house, kills her husband with a taser gun.All because there is a gun in the house of middle class family who have no intent to use it. Seemed excessive.
Banks is in the US on vacation and his daughter takes up with a Killer Bad Boy and does every foolish thing a 24 year old female could do. If you are looking for a nuanced real mystery, this is not it.

Most mystery writers get to this point every few years, where they just mechanically crank out another episode in their otherwise-enjoyable franchise. Maybe they feel entitled, maybe they have an onerous contract with their publisher, who knows. But all the usual words apply to this one: tepid, hackneyed, predictable. There were also too many unbelievable moments/decisions/judgment calls. Every mystery is allowed a small fudge, if there's just no other way to make a good plot work, but there were a string of them in this story. I felt kind of embarrassed that I didn't leave the book on the bus about half way through it. Even Winsome Jackman seemed bored if not disgusted with the proceedings.

In the realm of pop culture the female offspring with bad taste in men and a propensity for landing in life threatening-peril has a long history. Audra in The Big Valley, Diana Fairgate in Knots Landing, Kim Bauer in 24, to name but a few, inspired in viewers like me a weekly mixture of disappointment and awe. Disappointment that yet another perfectly good opportunity to kill them had been squandered and awe that any writer could think stupidity makes compelling entertainment. Into this rich tradition Peter Robinson's Bad Boy launches DCI Banks' daughter Tracey Banks, hitherto not renown for her imbecility.

Tracey, however, is a comer. And she's surrounded by several idiotic characters and situations that serve to vault her own burgeoning dimwittedness into the stratosphere. In the first few chapters we are confronted with England's dumbest mother - what do you do if you suspect your child is in trouble? Why you toddle down to the local police station; a "gun removal" procedure that despite several characters noting that it is "by the book" strikes me as being taken from the adventures of Larry, Moe and Curly; a cardboard cutout police villain; and Tracey, who has decided to call herself Francesca to spice up her boring life. Is it any wonder that Banks himself would choose to flee the jurisdiction and vacation in California? Sadly, he's not in search of higher IQs, he's off searching his soul after the collapse of his relationship with a younger woman and his encounter with MI5. He's on a California whine tour.

To make matters even more entertaining, Robinson has decided to delete the mystery portion from this installment of this mystery series. You know who did it. Banks knows who did it. The only person who is momentarily dim on this is, you guessed it, Tracey. Her decision to cleave unto the bad boy of the title is one the goofier aspects of the book - he was her friend's boyfriend, she just fancied him until the cops got involved. Then it's shopping, trashing Dad's place and running from the man all day. Like Gym, Tanning and Laundry, only even dumber.

As if this isn't enough fun, Robinson then tosses in a super-criminal known as The Farmer (cue the foreboding music) and his two psychotic henchmen. Then he adds a graphic torture tableau. It's a relief because for the last 20 books I've been saying to myself, Excellent characterizations, complex mysteries and genuine moral dilemmas are all fine and good but when is Robinson going to get serious and deliver more gratuitous victimization of women.

I'm not a fan of this book despite being a fan of the series. Robinson can do much, much better than this book that reads more like a plea for a movie deal than an entry into what has been up to know an extremely well-written, well-plotted, thoughtful mystery series. If you're a fan of Robinson and Banks, you may want to skip this one.

Robinson has always been a journeyman writer but is it just me or is he getting bored with Inspector Banks? This outing has Banks' daughter involved with a group of criminals, one (the Bad Boy) in particular) and Banks pursuing them while trying to safeguard his daughter. The problem is that the plot is implausible (his daughter would have to be implausibly stupid to behave as she does) and the violence and deaths seem almost an afterthought.

The characters are not "real" people. Erin's mother is unnatural. Any mother would first confront her daughter and ask "Why?" before reporting her to the police. Chief Inspector Banks is away most of the book, thank heavens, because he only tries to "find" himself and doesn't even contact his daughter via SMS or WhatsApp while on holiday, but chooses to have an affair instead. One doesn't expect that of a mature, responsible man and chief inspector. The daughter does not convince at all, and because she is the main character in this book, the book falls flat.

Bad Boy by Peter Robinson tells the story of Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks after he returns from a vacation. The storyline proceeds in an exciting fashion and the characters are drawn. We see the frailties and foolish choices people can make, which can change their lives and hurt others, through the actions of the realistic characters displayed. I recommend this book for people who like a good mystery.

One small caveat (and could this be some strange homage?): There is a bad guy (as opposed to "Boy") nicknamed The Farmer in this book. I read the description of this character and thought, Wait a minute--isn't he supposed to be a good guy? And he is, in Ian Rankin's Rebus books, as John's retired superior and mentor. Do you think I read too many detective stories? Nonetheless, I loved Bad Boy and devoured it in a day.

Peter Robinson has written some decent crime novels, but this isn't one of them. The dialogue is ham-fisted--from gangsters who talk like something out of a B movie from the 30's, to police officers who seem to have no idea of professional procedure, tactics or tact. Robinson lets us know that he knows he's past it as a novelist, because he is allowing series hero DCI Alan Banks to fade away to nothing, in that Banks is physically and mentally feeble in this book, and MIA for most of it. At the end he says he's thinking about quitting--Banks, that is, but Robinson should consider quitting too.

So anyway the baton rests in the hands of DI Annie Cabot and DC Winsome Jackman--who are, irritatingly, referred to by their first names. Is this because Jackman is black and both Jackman and Cabot are relatively young? Older, white, male characters, meanwhile, are always referred to by their rank and surname.

Banks' daughter Tracey is at the center of this plot. She acts with preposterous lack of intelligence and judgment for a 24-year-old woman, going along (and along and along) with the dangerous and abusive antics of a morally challenged young man just because he's sexy. The guy trashes her father's house (after Tracey has thoughtfully led the guy there and let him in). then th guy drinks Banks' best booze, slaps Tracey around, shoots her friend, rapes her, and takes her on a mad dash across country to seek out a crony of his who will get them forged passports so they can get out of the country. (Or maybe he'll just waste her and go on his own, as he sometimes suggests.) Through all this Tracey passes up several opportunities to escape, because of what the guy says might do to her in the distant future. One is hardly surprised when she--no kidding--starts sucking her thumb!!

And when Banks comes on the scene, nor does he have enough gumption to resist the guy--even when they go to the men's room together and the guy would presumably be having a hard time with his gun in one hand and something else in the other.

Well, it's just a stupid book. Terrible dialogue, vapid characters, silly plot.

A undemanding read which falls quite a bit short of the standard Peter Robinson achieved with many of his earlier novels in this series. The weaknesses lie in a less credible plot, some surprisingly two dimensional 1950s-style "real villians" (with dialogue to match), and a sense of the author's awkwardness in trying to sound authentic with much dialogue between the central younger characters in the story. Banks, by the time he finally appears, is his usual solid self but the plot and some of the characters he focusses the story around do not do him justice this time around.

Not really a detective story so much as a thriller, this is vintage Banks. The story draws the reader in deep and leads to a satisfying conclusion. This is basically a meditation on the nature of love vs. duty.

This book was a huge disappointment - A murder mystery is supposed to be just that - a mystery as to who the killer is. There was no mystery here. A killer was flung in our faces, and I found it very unbelievable that Tracey Banks, the daughter of Allan Banks, would behave in the manner described by the book.

Has Robinson written "One too many" with this book???????? His previous ones have been so good, but I will never buy another one. I will be throwing this one in the bin. Extremely disappointed, and I think Robinson has "written himself out" and should hang up his pen.

What a ridiculous book, especially the utterly implausible psychology and behavior of Tracy Banks. The plot is a bore. Robinson has written some good books, but the tired writing in this is an insult to his readers.

This book was a huge disappointment - A murder mystery is supposed to be just that - a mystery as to who the killer is. There was no mystery here. A killer was flung in our faces, and I found it very unbelievable that Tracey Banks, the daughter of Allan Banks, would behave in the manner described by the book.

Has Robinson written "One too many" with this book???????? His previous ones have been so good, but I will never buy another one. I will be throwing this one in the bin. Extremely disappointed, and I think Robinson has "written himself out" and should hang up his pen.

Like many British mysteries I've read, "Bad Boy" does not focus on a specific crime which has occurred, but, rather, on the characters involved and how they play out against the timeline of the book (even if crimes do occur later along the timeline). Therefore, instead of a more typical American "shoot-'em-up" or "horrible grisly crime" mystery, we are faced with a more evenly paced novel in which, at first, there is no crime at all. The book keeps going on the strength of its characters and we are more than welcome inside their heads, to figure out their motives, their flaws, their faults, their strengths and weaknesses. This is what makes "Bad Boy" an interesting book because the "story" is small in comparison--it starts out as a seed and eventually grows larger but this isn't some huge ghastly serial killer that we're chasing. I guess you could say that this, as is true of so many British mysteries, is more cerebral. It certainly depends on the interesting nature of its characters and in this it succeeds. I finished this novel with a desire to go back and read the other Inspector Banks novels, which I am sure are equally compelling.

What a ridiculous book, especially the utterly implausible psychology and behavior of Tracy Banks. The plot is a bore. Robinson has written some good books, but the tired writing in this is an insult to his readers.

This book was a huge disappointment - A murder mystery is supposed to be just that - a mystery as to who the killer is. There was no mystery here. A killer was flung in our faces, and I found it very unbelievable that Tracey Banks, the daughter of Allan Banks, would behave in the manner described by the book.

Has Robinson written "One too many" with this book???????? His previous ones have been so good, but I will never buy another one. I will be throwing this one in the bin. Extremely disappointed, and I think Robinson has "written himself out" and should hang up his pen.