Caedmon's Song (Paperback)

A university student has unwisely decided to walk though a night-shrouded park. She is savagely assaulted and wakes in hospital with her memory of the attack wiped clean. Through her tortured consciousness, impressions slowly begin to appear: memories of her attackers--there were two--begin to coalesce. Robinson's sympathy and understanding for the anguish of the student, Kirsten, is detailed with much understated skill and we become as keen as she is to crack the identity of her attackers.

But this is only one of Robinson's plot strands: his other protagonist, Martha Browne, has made her way to the historic seaside town of Whitby with a hidden agenda. Outwardly she is an author doing research for a forthcoming book, but beneath the surface she is tracking down, with steely determination, a malign figure. Who is this mysterious quarry? And what is the connection with the hospitalised student? Robinson is in no hurry to make these connections and the delicious frustration for the reader only increases the determination to read on.

While the plotting here has precisely the kind of jewel-like precision to be found in such previous Robinson titles as The Summer That Never Was and Aftermath, he's clearly not content to rest with the level of observation that distinguished those books: here, the pertinent comments on society and our attitude to criminals never derail the storytelling panache. Instead they act as the kind of shoring-up that lends weight and power to crime novels. --Barry Forshaw --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Synopsis
'A long, oily blackness punctuated by quick, vivid dreams ...They were all just dreams. She couldn't possibly see these things, could she? Her eyes were closed. And if they really happened, then she would have screamed out from the pain, wouldn't she?' On a balmy June night, Kirsten, a young university student, strolls home through a silent moonlit park. Suddenly, her tranquil mood is shattered as she is viciously attacked. When she awakes in hospital, she has no recollection of that brutal night. But then, slowly and painfully, details reveal themselves - dreams of two figures, one white and one black, hovering over her, wisps of a strange and haunting song; the unfamiliar texture of a rough and deadly hand...In another part of England, Martha Browne arrives in Whitby, 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?