FRIEND OF THE DEVIL - Couverture souple

Robinson, Peter

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0062400266 ISBN 13 : 9780062400260

Editeur : MorrowPb, 2015

A propos du livre

Extrait :

Sunday mornings were hardly sacrosanct to Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks. After all, he ­didn’t go to church, and he rarely awoke with such a bad hangover that it was painful to move or speak. In fact, the previous evening he had watched The Black Dahlia on DVD and had drunk two glasses of Tesco’s finest Chilean Cabernet with his reheated pizza funghi. But he did appreciate a lie-­in and an hour or two’s peace with the newspapers as much as the next man. For the afternoon, he planned to phone his mother and wish her a happy Mother’s Day, then listen to some of the Shostakovich string quartets he had recently purchased from iTunes and carry on reading Tony Judt’s Postwar. He found that he read far less fiction these days; he felt a new hunger to understand, from a different perspective, the world in which he had grown up. Novels were all well and good for giving you a flavour of the times, but he needed facts and interpretations, the big picture.

That Sunday, the third in March, such luxury was not to be. It started innocently enough, as such momentous sequences of events often do, at about half past eight, with a phone call from Detective Sergeant Kevin Templeton, who was on duty in the Western Area Major Crimes squad room that weekend.

“Guv, it’s me. DS Templeton.”

Banks felt a twinge of distaste. He ­didn’t like Templeton, would be happy when his transfer finally came through. There were times when he tried to tell himself it was because Templeton was too much like him, but that ­wasn’t the case. Templeton ­didn’t only cut corners, he trampled on far too many people’s feelings and, worse, he seemed to enjoy it. “What is it?” Banks grunted. “It had better be good.”

“It’s good, sir. You’ll like it.”

Banks could hear traces of obsequious excitement in Templeton’s voice. Since their last run-­in, the young DS had tried to ingratiate himself in various ways, but this kind of phony breathless deference was too Uriah Heep for Banks’s liking.

“Why ­don’t you just tell me?” said Banks. “Do I need to get dressed?” He held the phone away from his ear as Templeton laughed.

“I think you should get dressed, sir, and make your way down to Taylor’s Yard as soon as you can.”

Taylor’s Yard, Banks knew, was one of the narrow passages that led into the Maze, which riddled the south side of the town centre behind Eastvale’s market square. It was called a yard not because it resembled a square or a garden in any way, but because some bright spark had once remarked that it ­wasn’t much more than a yard wide. “And what will I find there?” he asked.

“Body of a young woman,” said Templeton. “I’ve checked it out myself. In fact, I’m there now.”

“You ­didn’t —”

“I ­didn’t touch anything, sir. And between us, Police Constable Forsythe and me have got the area taped off and sent for the doctor.”

“Good,” said Banks, pushing aside the Sunday Times crossword he had hardly started and looking longingly at his still-­steaming cup of black coffee. “Have you called the super?”

“Not yet, sir. I thought I’d wait till you’d had a butcher’s. No sense in jumping the gun.”

“All right,” said Banks. Detective Superintendent Catherine Gervaise was probably enjoying a lie-­in after a late night out to see Orfeo at Opera North in Leeds. Banks had seen it on Thursday with his daughter, Tracy, and enjoyed it very much. He ­wasn’t sure whether Tracy had. She seemed to have turned in on herself these days. “I’ll be there in half an hour,” he said. “Three-­quarters at the most. Ring DI Cabbot and DS Hatchley. And get DC Jackman there, too.”

“DI Cabbot’s still on loan to Eastern, sir.”

“Of course. Damn.” If this was a murder, Banks would have liked Annie’s help. They might have problems on a personal level, but they still worked well as a team.

Banks went upstairs and showered and dressed quickly, then back in the kitchen he filled his travel mug with coffee to drink on the way, making sure the top was pressed down tight. More than once he’d had a nasty accident with a coffee mug. He turned everything off, locked up and headed for the car.

He was driving his brother’s Porsche. Though he still ­didn’t feel especially comfortable in such a luxury vehicle, he was finding that he liked it better each day. Not so long ago, he had thought of giving it to his son, Brian, or to Tracy, and that idea still held some appeal. The problem was that he ­didn’t want to make one of them feel left out, or less loved, so the choice was proving to be a dilemma. Brian’s band had gone through a slight change of personnel recently, and he was rehearsing with some new musicians. Tracy’s exam results had been a dis­appointment to her, though not to Banks, and she was passing her time rather miserably working in a bookshop in Leeds and sharing a house in Headingley with some old student friends. So who deserved a Porsche? He could hardly cut it in half.

It had turned windy and cool, so Banks went back to switch his sports jacket for his zip-­up leather jacket. If he was going to be standing around in the back alleys of Eastvale while the SOCOs, the photographer and the police surgeon did their stuff, he might as well stay as warm as possible. Once snug in the car, he started the engine and set off through Gratly, down the hill to Helmthorpe and on to the Eastvale Road. He plugged his iPod into the adapter, on shuffle, and Ray Davies’s “All She Wrote” came on, a song he particularly liked, especially the line about the big Australian barmaid. That would do for a Sunday-­morning drive to a crime scene, he thought; it would do just fine.

Revue de presse :

Watch for those twists - they'll get you every time (Ian Rankin)

Robinson once again puts his skills to work in a police procedural that grips like pliers (Independent on Sunday)

Classic Robinson: a labyrinthine plot merged with deft characterisation (Observer)

Peter Robinson is good at producing ingenious mysteries, and this one does not disappoint (Daily Telegraph)

Readers will be on the edge of their seats (Publishers Weekly)

Watch for those twists theyll get you every time (Ian Rankin)

' Brit cop-job books don't come much better than Peter Robinson's . . . There's none of that frantic, rat-race paced frenzy that the Yanks employ that leave you needing a lie down after half a dozen pages. This is relax-on-the-sofa stuff, layered and engrossing with just the right balance of thrill, chill and human spillage to keep the reader honest . . . Bloody marvelous' (Daily Sport)

'Whatever the profession (from medicine to cuisine), it's always good to sit back and relax, knowing that you're in the hands of a consummate professional. So it is with crime fiction, and Peter Robinson is one of the most reliable names around. He has written 17 books in his much-acclaimed Inspector Bank series, and his writing has the confidence that is commensurate with the best in the field' (Barry Forshaw, Crime Time,)

Praise for Piece of My Heart (:)

'Brilliantly evokes the time of British psychedelia ... as well as being a terrific contemporary crime novel.' (Independent on Sunday)

'Robinson makes his way through the parallel stories with masterful confidence. His prose is both textured and easygoing, the mark of a writer who knows his territory. And he continues to assemble casts of characters that stick in the reader's head.' (Toronto Star)

'Robinson is good at producing ingenious mysteries and this one doesn't disappoint.' (Susanna Yager, Sunday Telegraph)

'Peter Robinson has for too long, and unfairly, been in the shadow of Ian Rankin; perhaps PIECE OF MY HEART, the latest in the Chief Inspector Banks series, will give him the status he deserves, near, perhaps even at the top of, the British crime writers' league . . . PIECE OF MY HEART brilliantly interweaves past and present, providing two strands of tension for the price of one, and further enhancing Alan Banks's reputation as one of crime fiction's most appealing cops.' (Marcel Berlins, The Times)

'Two riveting, equally interesting crime novels in one' (Telegraph)

'First-time readers will find FRIEND OF THE DEVIL an entirely satisfactory free-standing detective story,comprehensible on its own terms. Devotees will be in bliss, for it will remind them of many adventures of the past, settle some old scores in surprising ways, and hold out the promise of more twists and turns to come . . . absorbing mystery . . . Robinson has always been notably successful with women characters, creating distinctive mental lives for even the least and most transient of them, as he continues to do here.' (Times Literary Supplement)

'Readers will be on the edge of their seats as the two explore not only the depths of human depravity but also their own murky relationship' (Publishers Weekly)

'Robinson once again puts his skills to work in a police procedural that grips like pliers.' (Independent on Sunday)

'The 17th Chief Inspector Banks outing is classic Robinson: a labyrinthine plot merged with deft characterisation.' (Observer)

Yet the real star could be the fictional police officer Alan Banks, the cornerstone of Richmond-based author Peter Robinsons murder mysteries set in Yorkshire . . . Now that Ian Rankin has been forced to pension off the ubiquitous John Rebus, I see Banks becoming literatures favourite rogue detective. (Yorkshire Post)

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: MorrowPb
• Date d'édition: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0062400266
• ISBN 13: 9780062400260
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 384