By Canada's premier, bestselling crime fiction writer, the twenty-first book in the much-loved Inspector Banks series, now a television series on PBS, for readers of Ian Rankin and Michael Connelly.

A disgraced college lecturer is found murdered with £5,000 in his pocket on a disused railway line near his home. Since being dismissed from his job for sexual misconduct four years previously, he has been living a poverty-stricken and hermit-like existence in this isolated spot. There are many suspects, mostly at the college where he used to teach, but Banks, much to the chagrin of Detective Chief Superintendent Gervaise, soon becomes fixated on Lady Veronica Chalmers, who appears to have links with the victim going back to the early '70s at the University of Essex, then a hotbed of political activism. When Banks suspects that Lady Chalmers is not telling him the whole truth and pushes his inquiries a bit too far, he is brought on the carpet and warned to lay off. He must continue to conduct his investigation surreptitiously, under the radar, with the help of new DC Geraldine Masterson, while DI Annie Cabbot and DS Winsome Jackman continue to rattle skeletons at Eastvale College. When the breakthroughs come, they are not the ones that Banks and his team expected, and everything turns in a different direction, and moves into higher gear.

Peter Robinson's profile page

PETER ROBINSON was a beloved crime novelist whose work spanned thirty-five years. His final novel, Standing In the Shadows, is the twenty-eighth installment in the Inspector Banks series. His critically acclaimed books have won numerous awards in Britain, the United States, and Europe, and are published in translation all over the world. He also wrote two collections of short stories, and three stand-alone novels, including the #1 bestseller Before the Poison, winner of the Arthur Ellis Award, Sweden's Golden Crowbar Award, and the Dilys Award given by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. In 2020, Robinson was presented with the Grand Master Award by the Crime Writers of Canada. Several Inspector Banks novels have been adapted for television by ITV and have appeared on PBS. Peter, who grew up in the United Kingdom, lived with his wife, Sheila Halladay, in Toronto, Ontario, and Richmond, Yorkshire. Visit www.inspectorbanks.com.

Praise for Peter Robinson
"One of the grand masters of the genre." —Literary Review
"If there were an Order-of-Canada-style process for naming detective thriller writers to Ian Rankin- or Michael Connelly-like status, I would nominate Peter Robinson." —Globe and Mail
"The Inspector Banks novels are among the best detective fiction in the world." —Edmonton Journal
"Robinson is not just a master storyteller, he's a literary magician." —Montreal Gazette
"Taut; clean writing and subtle psychology. And watch for those twists—they'll get you every time." —Ian Rankin