Friday, September 19, 2025

Cold cases

In mysteries, old murders can help solve new murders and new murders can help solve old ones. Both are true in Peter Robinson’s 2023 Alan Banks novel, Standing in the Shadows.

Two stories, nearly 40 years apart, come together. In 1980, a student radical is found murdered, and her former boyfriend, Nick, is a prime suspect. Nick, who narrates this part of the tale, suspects Mark, Alice’s new boyfriend, but he has disappeared, and the police show no interest in finding him. And soon they lose interest in Nick, as well, and even in the case itself. What's going on?

In 2019, an archaeologist digging for Roman ruins finds a skeleton in a field, clearly just a few years old. Identifying the victim proves difficult, but gradually it is found to be the remains of a nattily dressed underworld figure.

How these two very different unsolved cases tie together makes for an interesting entry in this top-rate British police series.

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