Aftermath

by Peter Robinson Narrated by Ron Keith

Overview

When Inspector Banks of Yorkshire investigates whether an abusive husband might be guilty of an unsolved string of murders, his suspicions are aroused by the details of the man's marriage. Is the suspect's wife a victim or could she be his accomplice? Popular with fans of P.D. James and Ruth Rendell, Edgar Award-winning author Peter Robinson has earned honors and critical praise for his Inspector Banks novels.

Editorial Reviews

Otto Penzler

One of today’s most accomplished practitioners of detective fiction.

Tampa Tribune

Highly textured... Banks is a multidimensional figure struggling to cope with his private demons while directing murder investigations.

Dallas Morning News

A shocking suspense story that gives the reader a glimpse of the darker side of life.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

Robinson spins and intricate web...an excellent crime novel.

Boston Globe

A winner....Returning to the world of Alan Banks is, as always, a pleasure.

Houston Chronicle

A winner....Returning to the world of Alan Banks is, as always, a pleasure.

The San Diego Union Tribune

[A] splendid series.

Orlando Sentinel

Aftermath casts [a] spell... Robinson continues to stretch the boundaries of the standard procedural.

Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

Seamlessly plotted...The tenacious, thoughtful Banks is even fresher than when Robinson began this series...

New York Times Book Review

A devilishly good plotter...[Robinson’s] characterizations are so subtle that even the psychological profiler is stumped.

Dennis Lehane

The novels of Peter Robinson are chilling, evocative, deeply nuanced works of art.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171138158
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	07/22/2004
Series:	Inspector Alan Banks Series , #12
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Maggie Forrest wasn’t sleeping well, so it didn’t surprise her when the voices woke her shortly before four o’clock one morning in early May, even though she had made sure before she went to bed that all the windows in the house were shut fast.

If it hadn’t been the voices, it would have been something else: a car door slamming as someone set off for an early shift; the first train rattling across the bridge; the neighbour’s dog; old wood creaking somewhere in the house; the fridge clicking on and off; a pan or a glass shifting on the draining board. Or perhaps one of the noises of the night, the kind that made her wake in a cold sweat with a thudding heart and gasp for breath as if she were drowning, not sleeping: the man she called Mr. Bones clicking up and down The Hill with his cane; the scratching at the front door; the tortured child screaming in the distance.

Or a nightmare.

She was just too jumpy these days, she told herself, trying to laugh it off. But there they were again. Definitely voices. One loud and masculine.

Maggie got out of bed and padded over to the window. The street called The Hill ran up the northern slope of the broad valley, and where Maggie lived, about halfway up, just above the railway bridge, the houses on the eastern side of the street stood atop a twenty-foot rise that sloped down to the pavement in a profusion of shrubs and small trees. Sometimes the undergrowth and foliage seemed so thick she could hardly find her way along the path to the pavement.

Maggie’s bedroom window looked over the houses on the western side of The Hill and beyond, a patchwork landscape of housingestates, arterial roads, warehouses, factory chimneys and fields stretching through Bradford and Halifax all the way to the Pennines. Some days, Maggie would sit for hours and look at the view, thinking about the odd chain of events that had brought her here. Now, though, in the predawn light, the distant necklaces and clusters of amber streetlights took on a ghostly aspect, as if the city weren’t quite real yet.

Maggie stood at her window and looked across the street. She could swear there was a hall light on directly opposite, in Lucy’s house, and when she heard the voice again, she suddenly felt all her premonitions had been true.

It was Terry’s voice, and he was shouting at Lucy. She couldn’t hear what he was saying. Then she heard a scream, the sound of glass breaking and a thud.

Lucy.

Maggie dragged herself out of her paralysis, and with trembling hands she picked up the bedside telephone and dialed 999.

From the Paperback edition.

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