Here's to you, Peter Robinson

I ran out of Rebus novels a few weeks ago. Oh, the pain. I know that Ian Rankin has another coming out and I ate up his two new novels with his new guy who doesn't drink and smoke and is the opposite of rebus except that he is very clever but there is nobody like Rebus. I picture him asleep in his chair, having drunk the whisky I hesitate to spell here. He makes me feel better about my faults, Rebus is sexy and dark and drinks at the Oxford Bar. I want to go to the Oxford bar. I could bore on about Rebus forever and I am very excited that Ian Rankin and P.D. James are speaking in the cathedral at our literary festival next week.

And then I found Peter Robinson.  The joy.  Banks is sexy and clever. He has moved on from whisky to red wine and therefore we have lots in common.

 Banks lives in Richmond. Peter Robinson doesn't call it Richmond. Banks lives in a village outside the town of course, at least he  may have moved on. I am reading the books all back to front as I can find them, and don't really mind. Amongst all the streams and ducks and stone cottages the place is full of crime and there are lots of murders in graveyards and on the lovely moors. He drinks at lunchtime, he's like something from a better dark age when people didn't care that they might live to be old and pissing their knickers in a nursing home at ninety because they didn't smoke, didn't drink, didn't have Brie and didn't eat scones and walked three or four miles a day.
In Banks the local coppers go to the pub at lunchtime. The other thing is that the weather is awful. I love bad weather. I'm such a happy bunny when it rains and snows and hails and all the other things it does regardless of what the calendar suggests.

I came home yesterday with All The Colours of Darkness. It's like hiding a radio under the bedclothes when you were a kid except that my parents would never have minded.  I have lots of pillows and read and revel. I have just finished Innocent Graves. A murder trial. Yes!
I have also just finished The Litigators by John Grisham which is a totally different level, rather funny and quirky. I love anything about the law, how it works, how it doesn't work and am a big fan of Helena Kennedy who wrote a wonderful book called  Eve Was Framed. The only thing is it makes me seethe for how the law has treated and still treats women.
In the meanwhile I have Banks looking after North Yorkshire and it's a very comforting thought. And I still have about twelve books to go.