Dead Right

More Acclaim for
Dead Right

“This novel is Robinson at his best. A well plotted whodunnit, with solid characters and writings.”

—
The Gazette
(Montreal)

“Dead-on again … There is a sense of an older style of mystery writing at work within his series, a throwback to Josephine Tey and Ngaio Marsh … With nine Inspector Banks novels under his belt, Robinson has delivered enough installments now to make for a satisfying long read, beginning with
Gallow’s View
and culminating with
Dead Right
.”

—
Edmonton Journal

“A very satisfying read … Like the late, great Raymond Chandler, Peter Robinson writes good mysteries laced with social comment.”

—
Calgary Herald

“You can maintain the quality in a series if you just pay careful attention to the details. Robinson does … This book is full of good characters and topical relevance. Robinson knows how to make a moral point and not lose sight of the story.”

—
The Globe and Mail

“
Dead Right
is vintage Robinson, with his unusual knack for taking the headlines and transforming them into psychological thrillers.”

—
Winnipeg Free Press

“Elegantly crafted.”

—
The Hamilton Spectator

Acclaim for
Innocent Graves

“Robinson adds another level of nuance to his already fully dimensioned fiction and takes a quantum leap as a writer.”

—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

“Robinson’s work has an energy and imagination that makes it as fresh as it was in the beginning. In fact, this novel is one of the top three so far. This one is good right to the end.”

—
The Globe and Mail

“The characters have complexity and the issues range broad and deep, raising interesting moral questions about bigotry, class privilege and the terrible crime of being different.”

—The New York Times Book Review

Acclaim for
Wednesday’s Child

“His best work yet ... You really won’t put this one down until the final paragraph.”

—
The Globe and Mail

“He is steadily ascending toward the pinnacle of crime fiction.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“With
Wednesday’s Child
, Peter Robinson shows himself to be one of the very best crime novelists, and much more in control of his material and disturbing in his vision than certain much lauded composers of ‘psychological’ crime fiction ... This is a superb book, and disturbing.”

—
Books in Canada

Acclaim for
In a Dry Season

“The successful combination of the personal and the professional makes
In a Dry Season
another Robinson winner, well-written, deftly plotted and satisfyingly complete.”

—
The London Free Press

“Peter Robinson is an expert plotter with an eye for telling detail … The characters have complexity and the issues range broad and deep.”

—
The New York Times Book Review

“Those who have not discovered Peter Robinson’s literary procedurals should not miss
In a Dry Season
. A seamless weaving of the past and present, with each illuminating the other.”

—
San Antonio Express-News

PENGUIN CANADA

DEAD RIGHT

PETER ROBINSON
grew up in Leeds, Yorkshire. He emigrated to Canada in 1974 and attended York University and the University of Windsor, where he was later writer-in-residence. His many awards include five Arthur Ellis Awards, the Edgar Award for best short story, The Crime Writers’ Association’s Dagger in the Library Award, the Torgi talking book of the year, France’s Grand Prix de Littérature Policière and Sweden’s Martin Beck Award. His books have been published internationally to great acclaim and translated into fifteen languages. Peter Robinson lives in Toronto.

Other Inspector Banks mysteries

Gallows View

A Dedicated Man

A Necessary End

The Hanging Valley

Past Reason Hated

Wednesday’s Child

Final Account

Innocent Graves

In a Dry Season

Cold Is the Grave

Aftermath

The Summer That Never Was

Playing with Fire

Strange Affair

Piece of My Heart

Inspector Banks collections

Meet Inspector Banks

(includes
Gallows View, A Dedicated Man
and
A Necessary End
)

Inspector Banks Investigates

(includes
The Hanging Valley, Past Reason Hated
and
Wednesday’s Child
)

The Return of Inspector Banks

(includes
Innocent Graves, Final Account
and
Dead Right
)

Also by Peter Robinson

Caedmon’s Song

No Cure for Love

Not Safe After Dark

DEAD RIGHT

Peter Robinson

PENGUIN CANADA

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in a Viking Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 1997

Published in Penguin Canada paperback by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 1998

Published in this edition, 2006

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (WEB)

Copyright © Peter Robinson, 1997

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Manufactured in Canada.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Robinson, Peter, 1950–

Dead right : the return of Inspector Banks / Peter Robinson.

First published: Toronto : Viking, 1997.

ISBN-13: 978-0-14-305221-0

ISBN-10: 0-14-305221-7

I. Title.

PS8585.O35176D38   2006     C813’.54      C2006-902179-1

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at
www.penguin.ca

Special and corporate bulk purchase rates available; please see
www.penguin.ca/corporatesales
or call 1-800-399-6858, ext. 477 or 474

For my Canadian family:

Gord & Shirley, John, Lynn & Bob, Kate, Sarah, Pat & Brian, Alex, Elizabeth, Brian & Amy

ONE

I

The boy’s body sat propped against the graffiti-scarred wall in a ginnel off Market Street, head lolling forward, chin on chest, hands clutching his stomach. A bib of blood had spilled down the front of his white shirt.

Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks stood in the rain and watched Peter Darby finish photographing the scene, bursts of electronic flash freezing the raindrops in mid-air as they fell. Banks was irritated. By rights, he shouldn’t be there. Not in the rain at half past one on a Saturday night.

As if he didn’t have enough problems already.

Banks had got the call the minute he walked in the door after an evening alone in Leeds at Opera North’s
The Pearl Fishers
. Alone because his wife, Sandra, had realized on Wednesday that the benefit gala she was supposed to host for the Eastvale community centre clashed with their season tickets. They had argued—Sandra expecting Banks to forego the opera in favour of her gala—so, stubbornly, Banks had gone alone. This sort of thing had been happening a lot lately—going their own ways—to such an extent that Banks could hardly remember the last time they had done anything together.

The limpid melody of the “Au fond du temple saint” duet still echoed around his mind as he watched Dr Burns, the young police surgeon, start his
in situ
examination under the canvas tent the Scene-of-Crime officers had erected over the body.

PC Ford had come across the scene at eleven forty-seven while walking his beat, community policing being a big thing in Eastvale these days. At first, he said, he thought the victim was just a drunk
too legless to get all the way home after the pubs closed. After all, there was a broken beer bottle on the ground beside the lad, he seemed to be holding his stomach, and in the light of Ford’s torch, the dark blood could easily have passed for vomit.