Many Rivers to Cross

January 13, 2020
In Robinson’s discursive 26th police procedural featuring Yorkshire Det. Supt. Alan Banks (after 2018’s Careless Love), Zelda, “a consultant helping to build a database for facial recognition of sex traffickers” and longtime friend of Banks, joins the investigation into the death of Banks’s boss, Trevor Hawkins. Meanwhile, Banks is called out to a housing estate where the body of a 12- or 13-year-old boy has been crammed into a trash bin. Because a small amount of cocaine was found in the boy’s pocket, Banks and his team believe they may be dealing with a drug ring. However, they can’t rule out the possibility that it was a hate crime based on the boy’s Middle Eastern appearance. Soon, property schemes, insider trading, sex trafficking, and gang murders all start swirling into the mix, which includes a tenuous link to Zelda’s inquiry. Banks’s musings about music, food, and politics may not charm those who haven’t already come to admire the character; such digressions can feel more like padding than anything that adds interest to the lead. This isn’t the starting place for newcomers. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary.