I just finished reading this book earlier today.

It centres around a man called Chris Lowndes, a man who writes musical scores for movies returning home to Yorkshire at the age of 60, shortly after his wife has died of cancer. He moves into a big old house and quickly finds out that it has a dark history - in 1953, the doctor who lived there was apparently poisoned by his wife who was then hung for his murder.

With nothing better to do, Lowndes sets out to find out what really happened.

I was given this book as a present so it wasn't the usual thing I read. Robinson is obviously good at what he does and writes with his fans in mind, with lots of detail about the area and the local towns (I gather all his other books are set in Yorkshire, most featuring a regular character called DCI Banks). The story itself was so-so, with some interesting detail about the Second World War and trials of the time but in terms of the current plot it was mostly the central character visiting old men and talking to them over a couple of beers before coming to conclusions.

There was also a lot of superfluous detail, which again I think was aimed at Robinson's regular fanbase. For example, I really couldn't care less what Lowndes orders every time he goes to a restaurant, what brand of wine he drinks, which performer is playing which sonata on the CD he's listening to. Robinson obviously thinks these aspects add to the depth and most likely so do his fanbase, but for me there was a lot of padding and the novel could probably have been 50 pages shorter without any damage being done to the plot.

I wouldn't read it again, but I wouldn't rule out reading other books by the same author in the future. It had enough to keep me reading to the end which a lot of books don't.

Chris Ward
Author of The Tube Riders