What is it about British police procedurals? In a recent article in the ATLANTIC–focused on TV shows, but applicable to novels as well–Christopher Orr chalks up the fascination to three major factors: the omnipresence of CCTV surveillance, the comparative scarcity of handguns, and the relatively greater focus on victims than on perpetrators. Crime in the UK, Orr suggests, is “a deviation from the norm…rather than the norm itself.” Police are part of a “quasi-benevolent surveillance state,” and the “absence of gunfire… almost invariably leads to more actual detective work.”
Then there are all those exotic initialisms: PC (Police Constable, a uniformed beat cop), DCI (Detective Chief Inspector, a ranking officer in the CID (Criminal Investigations Department)), DS (Detective Sergeant), and so on. There are those nearly invisible but omnipresent distinctions of social class that have never disappeared in England. There’s the slang, as when Acting DSI (Detective Superintendent) Alan Banks in AFTERMATH says, “Let’s have a butcher’s, then.” (Cockney rhyming slang: “butcher’s hook” rhymes with “look.”)
I got addicted to the genre through the superb BBC drama PRIME SUSPECT, and am still searching for that perfect series of novels that will give me the same combination of realism, characterization, and mystery. The Inspector Banks series by Peter Robinson comes close. By setting the books in and around the fictitious North Yorkshire village of Eastvale (which grows into a city as the series progresses), Robinson adds a moody natural setting to the standard crime novel toolkit, while having the gritty urban sprawl of Leeds within easy driving distance.
The early books in the series are fairly conventional; the most notable thing about Banks is that he shares his creator’s love of music, from rock and folk to opera. IN A DRY SEASON (1999), however, where substantial sections of the book are set during World War II, serves notice that his ambitions have grown along with the page count of his novels. I’m reading them in order, and just finished the twelfth in the series, AFTERMATH (2001). It’s my favorite so far, and it exemplifies many of the qualities that make British crime fiction great.
The premise, conveyed by the title, is admirable. The story opens with two uniformed cops summoned the scene of a domestic dispute. When they arrive, they find a horrific scene of serial murder and are attacked by a lunatic with a sword. PC Janet Taylor subdues him with her baton (in the US, she would simply have shot him, and there would have been no questions about “excessive force”), the CID is called in, and in most crime novels the book would be over before it began. Instead we get over 450 pages of aftermath.
The main characters are: Terry Payne, the aforementioned lunatic; Lucy Payne, his wife, who was found unconscious when the cops arrived; Maggie Forrest, the neighbor who called the police, a Canadian on the run from her abusive ex-husband; the families of the victims; and of course the cops who are trying to construct a narrative that will allow some sort of closure.
The “House of Payne,” as the press inevitably dubs it, is reduced to a shell in the course of the novel–gardens dug up, carpets ripped out, flooring pulled up, the very walls torn open in the search for evidence. It’s a symbol of the long-term after-effects of violence, and we see those effects in character after character. In fact, the murders at the Payne house turn out to be themselves the aftermath of a previous crime. Robinson has done an outstanding job of pursuing his theme through major characters and minor, the present and the past, the geographically nearby and the distant. Even the cops have their casualties.
And not all the mysteries are solved. One of the victims in the Payne house remains unidentified. Thanks to the crime, Maggie’s ex-husband has located Maggie and threatened to pay her a visit.
I do have a few minor complaints. If Robinson needs a setting for a conversation, he tends to choose a pub, and we are subjected to a full inventory of what everyone eats and drinks. Banks is constantly obsessing over his cigarettes–wanting but not able to have one, lighting one, putting one out, again and again telling himself he should quit. None of this authorial indulgence advances the plot or builds character.
As in any long-running series, a certain amount of each book is devoted to franchise maintenance. Banks’s marriage falls apart over time, he has a contentious relationship with a supervisor, his kids grow up and move away. At times the check-ins can feel a bit pro forma, but for the most part they serve the intended purpose of adding depth and continuity. There’s a large supporting cast, a number of whom are particularly memorable. DS Jim Hatchley at first seems to be a typical corrupt cop, but Banks appreciates his strengths and makes good use of him. Fellow cop Annie Cabbot–tough, ambitious, smart, and living through an aftermath of her own–is complex and sympathetic, and her vegetarianism provides a welcome contrast to Banks’s endless meat pies.
As we in the US face the consequences of four years of Donald Trump, it’s a perfect time to think about the lasting harm that people can do to each other. AFTERMATH is a rare and valuable contribution to that conversation.
