Price of Love [Audiobook] [Audio CD]

Peter Robinson is best known for the excellent Inspector Banks series of novels. This collection demonstrates that he is also a very good short story writer.

Banks' fans will be delighted to get hold of the new stories featuring their hero. However, the other stories are also excellent. Of particular note are the first two in the collection. "Cornelius Jubb" sees Robinson tackle issues of race and a period, the Second World War, not covered elsewhere in his work, whilst "The Magic of Your Touch" has a supernatural theme.

Other stories concern the horrors of the trenches in World War One, the "hippy generation" and murderous duplicity in a marriage.

There are three stories featuring Inspector Banks. The one that will be of most interest to Banks' fans is the novella, "Like a Virgin". This fills in the back story for Banks, showing him working for the Metropolitan Police long before he went to Eastvale. Banks develops like a real human. At this stage in his life for example he ahs only just started listening to jazz and opera, which will become so central to his personality later on. Banks is an attractive hero not because he is flawed like a hackneyed cliché detective, but he appears like a real human being who has weaknesses as well as strengths which makes him interesting. The novella fills in some of the gaps in this very human existence.

Peter Robinson has had a long career writing about Inspector Banks and whilst these stories may not quite match the best of his novels, they are nonetheless very fine fiction.

Although best known for his long-running series of novels featuring Inspector Alan Banks, Peter Robinson is also a writer of short stories, and this is his second collection, after Not Safe After Dark: and other works. This collection contains 10 short stories, three of which feature Banks, and a novella in which the central story concerns Banks' last days as a policeman in London before his move north to Eastvale. All of the short stories have been published elsewhere, but it would take an avid collector of short stories from several countries to have read them all before - I'd only come across the one that's in John Harvey's Men from Boys.

The short stories show off Robinson's considerable versatility as a writer, with a wide range of settings, from war-time stories, to elements of the supernatural, parodies, PI's and the more familiar territory of Eastvale. All are rewarding, with interesting characters, atmospheric settings and intriguing plot lines. Particular favourites were Cornelius Jubb, a tale exploring racial tension in the American army and in Yorkshire, The Price of Love (the title story, in which the central character is a young boy, and Walking the Dog, with its dramatic twists. Fans of Banks will be delighted with the novella that concludes the collection; it begins with Banks in his present Eastvale home receiving a letter that prompts him to remember his last days working in London. We're then transported back to the mid-80s, and find Banks investigating prostitute murders in Soho; key series characters, including his family, Gristhorpe, and Dick Burgess are all introduced. Alongside a tense, taut plot, featuring organised crime, vice and violence, we get the background on Banks' early career follow him through his decision to apply for a vacancy in Eastvale. A great story in its own right, but also a good way to build up a fuller picture of Banks and to provide some further context for all that happens in his personal life through the series of novels. Highly recommended.

I bought this book without reading the back just because it was a Peter Robinson. Even though it turned out to be a book of short stories it was well worth the price. I had only read one of the stories previously and there were three 'Banks' stories which were excellent as usual. Especially the last story set in the '80s which sheds some light on how Insp Banks ended up in Eastvale. I would certainly recommend this book to anyone without hesitation.