Disclaimer

A collection of stories

The hero of Robinson's novels (Wednesday's Child, etc.), Yorkshire Chief Inspector Alan Banks, appears in three of this collection's 13 stories, and one of the 13, "Innocence," won the Canadian Crime Writers Award for best short story. That tale displays well Robinson's gift for turning a familiar plot inside-out as strange circumstances overwhelm his characters. A man waits outside a school to meet a teacher friend, draws the suspicion of parents and finds himself charged with the murder of a schoolgirl. What happens after his trial is shocking but, in Robinson's hands, perfectly believable. There's a similar twist in the title story, wherein an out-of-town visitor ventures nervously into an urban park often described as unsafe at night. There's danger, all right, but not what the reader expects. In "Fan Mail," a mystery novelist agrees to advise a Walter Mitty-like husband on innovative ways to murder his wife; an old secret leads to a perverse result. The plots of the stories are mostly solid and the characters are always vivid. U.S. readers may particularly enjoy Robinson's take on his fellow Canadians coping with Florida and southern California.

It should have been a cosy scene – log fire, sheepskin rug, Vivaldi on the stereo, Christmas lights and tree. But appearances can be deceptive. For Caroline Hartley, lying quietly on the couch, has been brutally murdered. Inspector Alan Banks is called to the grim scene. And he soon has more suspects than he ever imagined. As he delves into her past, he realises that for Caroline, secrecy was a way of life, and her death is no different. His ensuing investigation is full of hidden passions and desperate violence…<

As volunteers clean up after a huge outdoor rock concert in Yorkshire in 1969, they discover the body of a young woman wrapped in a sleeping bag. She has been brutally murdered. The detective assigned to the case, Stanley Chadwick, is a hard-headed, strait-laced veteran of the Second World War. He could not have less in common with – or less regard for – young, disrespectful, long-haired hippies, smoking marijuana and listening to the pulsing sounds of rock and roll. But he has a murder to solve, and it looks as if the victim was somehow associated with the up-and-coming psychedelic pastoral band the Mad Hatters. In the present, Inspector Alan Banks is investigating the murder of a freelance music journalist, who was working on a feature about the Mad Hatters for “MOJO” magazine. This is not the first time that the Mad Hatters, now aging rock superstars, have been brushed by tragedy. Banks finds he has to delve into the past to find out exactly what hornet’s nest the journalist inadvertently stirred up.<

Fire – It consumes futures and pasts in a terrified heartbeat, devouring damning secrets while leaving even greater mysteries in the ashes. The night sky is ablaze as flames engulf two barges moored side by side on an otherwise empty canal. On board are the blackened remains of two human beings. To the seasoned eye, this horror was no accident, the method so cruel and calculated that only the worst sort of fiend could have committed it. There are shocking secrets to be uncovered in the charred wreckage, grim evidence of lethal greed and twisted hunger, and of nightmare occurrences within the private confines of family. A terrible feeling is driving police inspector Alan Banks in his desperate hunt for answers – an unshakable fear that this killer’s work will not be done until Banks’s own world is burned to the ground.<

The chilling new Inspector Banks novel from the bestselling author of Playing With Fire. When he receives a mysterious and disturbing telephone call from his brother Roy, Banks heads off to London to search him out. Meanwhile, DI Annie Cabbot is called to a murder scene on a quiet stretch of road just outside Eastvale. A young woman has been found dead in her car… With Banks’s name and address written on a slip of paper in the back pocket of her jeans. While Banks stays in his brother’s luxurious, empty house, digging into his life and uncovering more and more surprises about the brother he didn’t really know and didn’t particularly like, Annie tracks down the female victim’s friends and colleagues. It seems that both trails are leading towards horrific conclusions and when the cases look likely to intersect, the consequences for Banks and Annie become terrifying…<

On a balmy June night, Kirsten, a young university student, is strolling home through a silent moonlit park when she is viciously attacked.

When she awakes in the hospital, she has no recollection of that brutal night. But then slowly, painfully, details reveal themselves – dreams of two figures, one white and one black, hovering over her; snatches of a strange and haunting song; the unfamiliar texture of a rough and deadly hand…

In another part of the country, Martha Browne arrives in a Yorkshire seaside town, posing as an author doing research for a book. But her research is of a particularly macabre variety. Who is she hunting with such deadly determination? And why?

The First Cut is a vivid and compelling psychological thriller, from the author of the critically acclaimed Inspector Banks series.

A disused church near a Welsh border hamlet has already been sold off by the Church when it's discovered that the new owners are "pagans" who intend to use the building for their own rituals. Rev. Merrily Watkins, the diocesan exorcist, is called in, unaware of a threat from a deranged man.<

When record tycoon Max Goff travels to the village of Crybbe and decides to replace ancient stones that had fallen over, he unleashes a centuries-old evil.<

The post of "Diocesan Exorcist" in the Church of England has changed to the preferred term "Delivery Ministry". It sounds less sinister, more caring, so why not a job for a woman? When offered the post the Rev. Merrily Watkins cannot easily refuse, having suffered uncanny experiences of her own.<

In 1934, the dying composer Sir Edward Elgar feebly whistled to a friend the theme from his Cello Concerto and said, "If you're walking on the Malvern Hills and hear that, don't be frightened. It's only me." Seventy years later, Merrily Watkins—parish priest and Deliverance Consultant to the Diocese of Hereford—is called in to investigate an alleged paranormal dimension in a spate of road accidents in the Malvern village of Wychehill. There, Merrily discovers new tensions in Elgar's countryside. The proposed takeover of a local pub by a nightclub owner with a criminal reputation has become the battleground between the defenders of Olde Englande and the hard men of the drug world—with extreme and sinister elements on both sides. And as the choral society prepares to stage an open-air performance of Elgar's Caractacus at a prehistoric hill fort, the deaths begin.<

Another mystery for exorcist Reverend Merrily Watkins. Dark shadows have gathered around a converted hopkiln where the last owner was brutally murdered, while a women claims her daughter is possessed by an evil spirit. Merrily untwines the history of a village and the legacy of Roman gypsies.<

Called in secretly to investigate an allegedly haunted house with royal connections, Merrily Watkins, deliverance consultant for the Diocese of Hereford, is exposed to a real and tangible evil. A hidden valley on the border of England and Wales preserves a longtime feud between two old border families as well as an ancient Templar church with a secret that may be linked to a famous ghost story. On her own and under pressure with the nights drawing in, the hesitant Merrily has never been less sure of her ground. Meanwhile, Merrily’s closest friend, songwriter Lol Robinson, is drawn into the history of his biggest musical influence, the tragic Nick Drake, finding himself troubled by Drake’s eerie autumnal song "The Time of No Reply."<

 All talk is of the End-time... and the dead are rising.

At the end of the sunless summer of 1560, black rumour shrouds the death of the one woman who stands between Lord Robert Dudley and marriage to the young Queen Elizabeth.

Did Dudley's wife, Amy, die from an accidental fall in a deserted house, or was it murder?

Even Dr John Dee, astrologer royal, adviser on the Hidden and one of Dudley's oldest friends, is uncertain.

 Then a rash promise to the Queen sends him to his family's old home on the Welsh Border in pursuit of the Wigmore Shewstone, a crystal credited supernatural properties.

With Dee goes Robert Dudley, considered the most hated man in England.

They travel with a London judge sent to try a sinister Welsh brigand with a legacy dating back to the Battle of Brynglas.

After the battle, many of the English bodies were, according to legend, obscenely mutilated.

Now, on the same haunted hill, another dead man has been found, similarly slashed.

Devious politics, small-town corruption, twisted religion and a brooding superstition leave John Dee isolated in the land of his father.

It appears that the unlovely village of Underhowle is home to a serial killer. But as the police hunt for the bodies of more young women, Rev. Merrily Watkins fears that the detective in charge has become blinkered by ambition. Meanwhile, Merrily has more personal problems, like the anonymous phone calls, the candles and incense left burning in her church, and the alleged angelic visitations.<

A crumbling hotel on the border of England and Wales, a suggestion of inherited evil, a mystifying love affair… and the long–disputed origins of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s . It’s all endlessly fascinating for young Jane Watkins, flushed with the freedom of her first weekend job. But the sinister side becomes increasingly apparent to Jane’s mother, Merrily, diocesan exorcist for Herford. And the snow is coming. And a killing. Altogether, one of the most original and atmospheric crime novels you’ll read this year.<