All the Colours of Darkness: DCI Banks 18

Product Information

The face jerked upwards and stared at him, haggard, almost spectral-looking. Arnold felt a flash of sympathy for Thomas J. Watkins III. As chief engineer of the Universal Transmitting Company, Arnold had nothing more at stake than his pride and his job. His pride had been deflated so often it was immune to punctures, and his job could be replaced in no more time than it would take him to make a phone call. I hope you’ll get what you ask, Arnold said. He looked at his watch. I have two forty-seven—right—now. All the Colors of Darkness' (1963) is the first of the Jan Darzen novels and is a little disappointing, not because it is 'bad' (it isn't by any means) but because the central idea is so interesting and initially well handled that reducing it to an off-planet 'mystery' tale flattens early expectations.

That central idea is the invention of a technology which allows instant and safe transmission of people and eventually freight from one place to another. The early chapters explore the idea as a social and business phenomenon. The mystery seems to be one of organised sabotage. Similarly, I think he is trying to go for a hyper-observant effect by choosing irrelevant crap and then describing it in completely excessive detail. It's true that the story started with a bang but sadly it all seems to end with a sort of whimper. Maybe that is because Robinson could only go so far with his myriad sub-plots. But while the destination was questionable the journey was entertaining.Bottom line, it looks like a domestic quarrel where one partner bludgeoned the other and then hanged himself in grief so Annie Cabbot hardly needed assistance with this case.

It’s all right now, Arnold said. You won’t be needed. If you’d rather wait in the office, go ahead.I do like the music references. This year Banks is incredibly listening to Cat Power and Mazzy Star - which I find refreshing (but unlikely). Presumably, these are the authors tunes and he has good taste. It also means that reading his books and meeting a familar character becomes like catching up with an old friend. That said I really enjoyed the deceptively straightforward style of Peter Robinson's storytelling. While it's all in the third person, he cleverly posits the reader into the mindset of the chief protagonist in each section of the story. Sometimes with humour, sometimes with cynicism and often with a keen sense of mystery. Because Yorkshire is Banks' home base, it makes for a dramatic contrast between the innate picturesque beauty of the county and the tough underbelly of the people who live on the housing estates outside the tourist towns, many struggling with the high crime rate and inclement weather.

Robinson έχει το ελεύθερο να χρησιμοποιήσει τη συγγραφική του δεινότητα με τρόπο ώστε να ιντριγκάρει τους αναγνώστες, να τους επιτρέψει να κοιτάξουν για μια στιγμή από την κλειδαρότρυπα σ’ αυτόν τον κόσμο που μοιάζει τόσο μακρινός από όλους εμάς, αλλά χωρίς να πλησιάσει αρκετά. Τα όσα αναφέρονται, άλλωστε, μάλλον δεν απέχουν και τόσο πολύ από τις πραγματικές συνθήκες που διέπουν συνήθως τέτοιες περιπτώσεις – οπωσδήποτε, πάντως, δεν φαντάζουν υπερβολικές ή εξωπραγματικές. Alright, so I seem to have a bit of a problem with how mystery writers talk about coffee, but damn it, NO ONE would say that. Especially when it's ANOTHER cup, so the guest knows what kind of bloody coffee they are getting. I suppose I should just be grateful that it wasn't "another cup of freeze-dried Tesco Gold Medium-Blend coffee, mixed with hot water from the Tefal kettle in my MFI kitchen, and stirred with a spoon that is slightly bent because I use it to open tins of Tate & Lyle's golden syrup". Marrow had placed a chair in the protective shadow of the filing cabinet. The other man in the room continued to pace the floor. Alan Banks is a terrier, unwilling to let go of a case until he has all the answers. I chose 4 stars instead of 5 because I found some of the actions in the book to be a bit unbelievable, by Banks, and by the spies. When Banks realized who was behind the deaths, he continued to push even though admitting that no charges could be brought and nothing proven. Considering the unrelenting pressure to drop the case, I found it hard to believe he would just keep charging on, dragging the faithful friend Annie Cabot deeper into the mess. The spies pat handling of the death at the end of the book I found hard to swallow also. Set designer Mark Hardcastle’s hanging in Hindswell Woods certainly looks like a suicide, his only wounds from a noose tied by someone left-handed, like Hardcastle himself. After Annie Cabbot’s initially inconclusive visit to Hardcastle’s colleagues at the Eastvale Theatre, an obvious motive for suicide surfaces with the discovery of Hardcastle’s lover, retired civil servant Laurence Silbert, clubbed to death in his posh digs. In between the two deaths, a shopkeeper sold Hardcastle, his face grimed in blood, the rope used to hang him. So why does Supt. Catherine Gervaise, who hustled Banks onto the case on his day off, promptly hustle him off and into enforced vacation? Why does she insist that Annie drop her inquiries to focus on the nonfatal stabbing of a teenaged drug dealer in East Side Estate? Why do Banks’s unofficial questions lead to threats and worse against his lover Sophia Morton? Why are Her Majesty’s minions so transparently eager to draw the curtain on a case that looks open-and-shut? The answers will link Hardcastle’s latest work on Othello to the government post Silbert retired from, but in a maddeningly inconclusive way that yields a high degree of realism but a conclusion that drags on forever.Arnold fumbled for a handkerchief, and as he mopped the perspiration from his bald head the pacing stopped a second time. A minute, you say? You can't intimidate me with the graphic horror of it all. I've seen dead bodies. I've even seen Saw IV and Hostel Part II." Biggle sets up his series to be entertainments relying on the technology of matter transmission but one senses an opportunity lost and an under-use of his talents, a sudden loss of imagination as more than just complicated story lines and aliens. Arnold returned to the office. Marrow seemed to have got a grip on himself. He had moved his chair over by the table, and Arnold considered finding something for him to do and decided there wasn’t anything that needed doing. Watkins had resumed his floor pacing. Arnold sat down, got the Newark station on one telephone and Perrin on another, and waited, wondering if he had been ridiculously optimistic in rating their chances at fifty-fifty.