Harold Gillespie, who owned the site of Grace Hutchinson’s discovery at the time of the burial, naturally professes to know nothing about the dead man and points out that he would hardly have buried a man he killed on his own property. Within moments he is being questioned by detectives regarding another resident, Nick’s ex-girlfriend, Alice Poole.

The momentum built up nicely during the middle of the novel, but somehow seemed to tail off towards the end and the identity of the skeleton was pretty soon obvious. In the former, a skeleton is unearthed during an archaeological dig on a piece of wasteland near the A1. Back in the 80s, Nick finishes his degree and, still obsessed with Alice’s murder, begins a career in journalism that takes him from a provincial weekly to a local daily and, ultimately, to a major national, where he becomes an investigative reporter. I recommend giving those two a go if reading the whole series seems like too much as those two are terrific and work well as standalone books.

The gifted Peter Robinson gives the reader two mysteries, set decades apart, in Standing in the Shadows, the twenty-eighth in the Detective Alan Banks series.

STANDING IN THE SHADOWS is textbook Peter Robinson, expertly conceived and suspenseful from start until finish. It worked for me because I enjoy entering the world where Banks resides with his solid reputation, brilliance at what he does and how he works with his team and his frequent music references that add so much. Despite there being a thorough investigation, Detective Banks feels the need to do some final checks because he thinks it all wrapped up too smoothly.His ex-girlfriend, Alice Poole, has been found murdered, and her new boyfriend Mark Woodley is missing. It didn’t take me long to question if there was a link between the 1980 unsolved murder and the discovery of a body in a field, but it took me to the end of the book to discover if I was correct in my assumption. Decades later, in November 2019, an archaeologist unearths a skeleton that turns out to be far more contemporary than the Roman remains she is seeking. The first episodes of the Inspector Banks TV adaptation came along in 2010, with Tompkinson well received playing the title character.