You're the least worst candidate I can find

I've long been a fan of the DCI Banks novels by Peter Robinson, so I was happy to see that they had been dramatized.  Of course, how you imagine things in your mind is never how they turn out in the film or TV versions of the works, but it was still interesting to see the characters of Alan Banks and Annie Cabbot brought to life.  In the first episode of the series, Aftermath, we see not only DCI Banks at his crime-solving best, but we also see when he meets Annie for the first time.

The program starts with a shocking crime and only gets worse from there.  A woman hears a crash and a scream from the house across the street.  She calls the police, and soon a car with a male and a female officer pulls up to investigate.  The police officers get no response from their knocking, but thanks to the British convention of having a mail slot in the door, they are able to look inside the house and see a bloodied woman on the floor.  After breaking down the door, they call an ambulance and then start looking for the perpetrator.  Down in the basement, they encounter another locked door, and upon breaking it down, discover something they were in no way prepared for:  the dead body of a young woman tied to a table, and the covered bodies of several  more women.  While staring at this horrific scene, a man suddenly emerges with a machete and proceeds to slash the male officer.  Girl power is luckily on offer, though, as the female officer is able to subdue the man and attempt to tend to her colleague.

That is the set-up for DCI Banks to enter the scene.  He's been investigating the disappearances of 5 young women in the area, and it looks as though he's found out what happened to them.  Or some of them at least, as there are only 4 bodies in the basement.  Banks has been tormented by images of the missing young women every time he looks out the window to his back garden.  The woman who was found injured is Lucy Payne and her husband, Marcus, is presumed to be the killer.  Both Lucy and her husband are currently in the hospital being treated for various injuries, so Banks is unable to question them at the moment.  In fact, Marcus Payne is in a coma as a result of severe head injuries he received while being subdued.  The extent of his injuries prompt a doctor to demand that the officer responsible for this presumed abuse of power be charged with assault. 

Enter DS Annie Cabbot.  She is with the police internal investigation unit and is given the job of trying to find out what exactly happened to Marcus Payne that resulted in such severe injuries.  She seems determined to do whatever it takes to get a result (based on what her superior officers tell her) so that she can be promoted.  Her investigations overlap with Banks' attempts to find the remaining missing girl, so they are drawn together.  Banks soon begins to suspect that Marcus Payne must have had an accomplice in his abduction and murder scheme, so his investigation begins to turn in a new direction.

I really enjoyed seeing the characters of Banks and Annie brought to life, even if Annie was a bit more glamorous than I had imagined.  Her choice of working clothes was also a bit unexpected.  After all, if you are a policewoman, everyone knows the surest way to gain respect and get promoted is to wear tight and/or see-through blouses.  In most police dramas, the female officers seem to do all they can to be accepted and taken seriously by their male colleagues.  It was very strange to see Annie flouting that in favor of playing up her attractiveness.  Oh well, more than one way to skin a cat, I suppose!

This was the first program in the 12 that have been filmed so far, so I hope I can see more of them.  Banks and Annie's relationship will surely have its ups and downs, and I will be interested to see if any of her superiors ever give her any wardrobe advice . . .

Final Verdict for DCI Banks: Aftermath:  Four Gherkins, for being a fast-paced drama with lots of twists and turns

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Check out this bad boy!

I've long been an admirer of the Peter Robinson Inspector Banks series. The stories take place in Yorkshire and concern the music-loving police inspector and his many cases. I was thrilled to receive an advanced copy of the latest book in the series, Bad Boy, which will be released in the US on August 24.

As the book opens, Inspector Alan Banks is taking a holiday from his duties at the Eastvale police station. This is a great pity, because a woman arrives asking specifically to speak to Banks. Juliet Doyle is a former neighbor of Banks', and she had a rather delicate matter to discuss with him. Since he's gone, she is persuaded to speak instead with Annie Cabbot, who is a colleague and former lover of Banks. Juliet says that she's found a gun in her daughter's room, and she needs to know what to do about it. This is where it becomes interesting for an American reader to notice the differences between gun laws in the US and the UK. Apparently, just possessing a firearm in the UK means an automatic 5 year prison term. No doubt Juliet was hoping her friend Banks could advise her on how to turn the gun in without getting her daughter into trouble. Annie, however, feels compelled to report the situation to her supervisor. From then on, things go terribly wrong.

Juliet's husband and their daughter Erin are at home, waiting for Juliet and Banks to arrive and deal with the gun situation. Instead, almost an entire police squad descends on the house to confiscate the dangerous weapon. In the course of the confusion, Juliet's husband Patrick is shocked by the police with a taser and subsequently dies in the hospital.

It soon emerges that Erin, the girl with the gun, is sharing a house with two other girls. One girl, Rose, has only just moved in, but the other girl "Francesca" has been Erin's friend since childhood. Francesca turns out to be Banks' daughter, Tracy. Once Tracy hears about the problems at Erin's parents' house, she immediately rushes to tell Erin's boyfriend, Jaff. Jaff is the "bad boy" in the title of the book.

Jaff is the one Erin took the gun from, after a heated argument. After Tracy informs him of the current situation, Jaff tells her they must find a place to lie low until they can leave the country. At first, Tracy thinks this is a marvelously fun idea. She's resentful of her absentee father, and feels like her job working in a bookstore is a disappointment to her parents. She knows her father is out of the country on vacation, so she immediately suggests that they hide out in his isolated country house for a few days. Jaff, extremely paranoid, takes her mobile phone from her "so they can't be traced." She still thinks she's on an adventure until a few days later when she opens Jaff's bag in an attempt to retrieve her phone. She discovers a huge amount of cash, another gun, and what appears to be massive amounts of drugs. At approximately the same time, Jaff, looking through papers in the house, discovers that Tracy is a policeman's daughter. If she wasn't before, Tracy is now officially Jaff's hostage and bargaining chip. As they are getting ready to flee the house to go to London, Annie Cabbot shows up to water the plants.

Banks arrives back in England only to be met with the news of everything that has been happening. He must attempt to track down Jaff before he decides to get rid of Tracy permanently. There is also a major crime boss that Banks suspects of being the source of the guns, but he is unable to prove anything.

I must admit that I haven't read the books in order, or probably even all of the books in the series, so there were things that were mentioned from time to time that were unfamiliar to me. This book also has the recurrent theme of all of the characters (especially Banks) needing to inform the reader what music they are listening to at all times. It's rather funny to be enlightened as to the soundtrack of a hostage situation/car chase.

Final Verdict for Bad Boy: Three Gherkins, for being a page-turning and action-filled episode in the Inspector Banks saga

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