Wednesday's Child - Peter Robinson

The Inspector Banks books written by Peter Robinson have become one of my favourite crime fiction series out of all the ones I have read. Each book is as well developed as the last and as I never seem to be able to pick them up in chronological order, I'm glad that you can read the series in any order really as the stories never really carry on from the last book. Wednesday's Child is no exception to this, and I think it is the 6th in the Inspector Banks series.

It can be found in Waterstones at around £7.99, however I have been able to find it on Amazon for around £2 including postage. Yet, I also have seen this in different libraries or the occassional charity shop so there might be a chance you could find it there.

Robinson's writing has always been high quality in all of his novels, as his stories never stray from reality and the crimes that people commit within his novels, you could almost imagine hearing about them in newspapers. Robinsons manages to create a dark and twisted plotline, however at the same time he does manage to at some parts look at the other emotion side of the story, as some of the smaller chapters look at the abducted child's mother and Bank's own family life.

The plotline itself begins by focusing on the abduction of a child called Gemma by a man and woman posing to be social service workers. Superintendent Gristhorpe takes the main lead here, which was a nice addition as I hadn't really known much about his character and Robinson did look at cases from the intendents past which showed why Gemma's case had such a personal interest to him.

However, while this case is going on, a man turns up at an abandoned mine murdered, and DC Banks takes charge of this case, determined to find the killer. The story takes many twists and turns, when you think they've finally found the killer or abductor, it turns out they haven't and it's like being reverted back to square one.

Both the cases continue, and as they go along it seems that both have a lot of strange similarities and it appears that there is a connection between them. Eventually the two teams begin working together as they realise that there is a strong possibility both these crimes are connected. With the two cases merging together, it almost seems like I liked this in the book as it did keep me reading as any guesses you make can never be for certain in Robinson's writing.

Familiar readers of the Banks series will like the fact that Robinson does talk about previous characters that those have got accustomed to within the books. We get to learn more about Banks and his personal life with wife Sandra and children Brian and Tracy. I thought this was a nice touch as for some crime fiction it's just so focused on the criminal you never really get to learn about the men who catch the criminal at the end of the day.

The book definitely is well written, as Robinson did not try and make it too dark, too detailed with all the police work and too emotion driven. The pace didn't slow down at all throughout the book and was not too overloaded with the long police work it takes to catch killers like this, as Robinson manages to make it so that something is always being revealed or discovered in whatever chapter you read.

I would definitely consider recommending this to a friend who is interested in crime fiction, whether they have read both the previous books or are interested simply in a thrilling crime fiction novel. Robinson is a great writer who definitely knows how to write a book to keep his audience entertained and reading till the very end.