Close to Home, a review by Joanna

Banks is on holiday in Greece when he learns that a skeleton unearthed on a building site is that of his friend Graham, who disappeared without trace early one morning while doing his paper round in 1965 when they were both fourteen. Feeling compelled to help, he travels back to his home town, where the young DI in charge of the case is initially suspicious of his motives, but of course soon falls for his charms. Meanwhile back home, his ex, DI Annie Cabbot, is looking for the son of a couple of local minor celebrities, who appears to have been kidnapped.

For a book that’s twenty years old, this holds up well. I found myself rapidly immersed back into Banks’ world – he evolves a little more with each instalment, although I’m still repelled by the way he sizes each female character in terms of her sexual appeal, or lack of. All male characters, with the exception of the victims, are of course ugly, which perhaps explains why otherwise sensible women keep falling into bed with him. This all happens off camera, much to my relief. We get to meet his parents for the first time (as far as I can recall anyway) and their stilted and faintly disapproving attitudes towards him go some way to explaining his emotional illiteracy. There’s an awful lot of musical and literary showing off here – in fact if you trimmed down all the mentions of 60s rock songs and singers you could save a hundred or so pages in a book that felt rather long for a thriller. Still, it kept my attention throughout and I didn’t guess the outcome of either mystery. 3.5 rounded up for the usual atmospheric writing.