Many Rivers to Cross
A Novel
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4.0 • 178 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Peter Robinson, the acclaimed author of the bestselling series Stephen King calls “the best now on the market,” returns with a gripping, emotionally charged mystery in which the revered detective Alan Banks must find the truth about a murder with possible racial overtones—and save a friend from ruin. In Eastvale, a young Middle Eastern boy is found dead, his body stuffed into a wheelie bin on the East Side Estate. Detective Superintendent Alan Banks and his team know they must tread carefully to solve this sensitive case, but tensions rise when they learn that the victim was stabbed somewhere else and dumped. Who is the boy, and where did he come from?
Then, in a decayed area of Eastvale scheduled for redevelopment, a heroin addict is found dead. Was this just another tragic overdose, or something darker?
To prevent tensions from reaching a boiling point, Banks must find answers quickly. Yet just when he needs to be at his sharpest, the seasoned detective finds himself distracted by a close friend’s increasingly precarious situation. Banks needs a break—and gets one when he finds a connection to a real estate developer who could be the key to finding the truth.
With so many loose ends dangling, there is one thing Banks is sure of—solving the case will come at a terrible cost.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Intuitive, levelheaded Detective Superintendent Alan Banks views crime as a pervasive blight on his bucolic English hometown. But when the body of a 13-year-old Syrian boy is found on a housing estate, Banks senses something stranger—and more sinister—is at play. Soon, the decaying corpse of a middle-aged heroin addict leads Banks to think that the seemingly unconnected murder victims have something in common. Many Rivers to Cross is a police procedural that balances heavy themes like drug addiction, human trafficking, and institutional racism with witty dialogue and tight pacing. Part of a series but entirely engrossing as a standalone, Peter Robinson’s book is British mystery at its best.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
