A distracted detective

One ideally should read Peter Robinson's series of Inspector Banks novels in order from the beginning (Gallows View, 1987) because the lives and loves of the continuing characters are as important and as interesting as the mysteries solved. Yet even finding (and affording) all the earlier books can be a challenge, and so we can read Sleeping in the Ground, his excellent 2017 entry in the series, and have to play catchup from the last novel you read, in my case Wednesday's Child (1992).

This time the personal life of Banks seems to distract him from solving a mass murder. A sniper hits nine members of a wedding party, killing most of them, including the bride. Yet Banks is preoccupied by the death of his first love and then by the reentry into his life of Jenny Fuller, a criminal profiler whom he had a crush on years before when he was married. Turns out, she had a crush on him, too, but now that they're both free, she's not so sure.

Even with the distractions the case wraps up quickly when the suspect is found dead from suicide in his basement. Readers will be suspicious long before Banks and his crew are because it's not yet page 100 in a 319-page book. Sure enough, there's much more to come, and the conclusion turns out to be even more exciting than usual in this series.

The novel's title would seem to refer not so much to the deceased as to the long-buried emotions of both Banks and the killer he pursues. The story is about what happens when those feelings come to the surface.