Friend of the Devil: The 17th DCI Banks crime novel from The Master of the Police Procedural

Peter Robinson

Sep 2008 · Hachette UK

About this ebook

The seventeenth instalment in the Number One bestselling DCI Banks series

When Karen Drew is found sitting in her wheelchair staring out to sea with her throat cut one chilly morning, DI Annie Cabbot, on loan to Eastern Area, gets lumbered with the case.

Back in Eastvale, that same Sunday morning, 19-year-old Hayley Daniels is found raped and strangled in the Maze, a tangle of narrow alleys behind Eastvale's market square, after a drunken night on the town with a group of friends, and DCI Alan Banks is called in. Banks finds suspects galore, while Annie seems to hit a brick wall - until she reaches a breakthrough that spins her case in a shocking and surprising new direction, one that also involves Banks.

Then another incident occurs in the Maze which seems to link the two cases in a bizarre and mysterious way. As Banks and Annie dig into the past to uncover the deeper connections, they find themselves also dealing with the emotional baggage and personal demons of their own relationship.

It soon becomes clear that there are two killers in their midst, and that at any moment either one might strike again.

Ratings and reviews

Another first rate yarn from Peter Robinson. Characters are well painted and ring true. The plot is typical Robinson, the sort of plot that drags you into the book so that you want to sit and read it all in one big, luxurious gulp! If, like me, you come from North Yorkshire you will revel in the setting, as well as the characters. I'll be buying the next Banks adventure as soon as I put the full stop at the end of this sentence.

I enjoy a lot of crime fiction and found this to be very well written (no typos, ugly patches of writing etc) and a great story!

Peter robinson weaves his stories so well with some of the plots overlapping very cleverly from book to book- tying up 'loose ends'

About the author

Peter Robinson's DCI Banks became a major ITV1 drama starring Stephen Tompkinson (Wild at Heart, Ballykissangel) as Inspector Banks, and Andrea Lowe (The Bill, Murphy's Law) as DI Annie Cabbot. Peter's standalone novel BEFORE THE POISON won the IMBA's 2013 Dilys Award as well as the 2012 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel by the Crime Writers of Canada. This was Peter's sixth Arthur Ellis award. His critically acclaimed DCI Banks novels have won numerous awards in Britain, the United States, Canada and Europe, and are published in translation all over the world. In 2020 Peter was made a Grand Master by the Crime Writers of Canada. Peter grew up in Yorkshire, and divided his time between Richmond, UK, and Canada until his death in 2022.