The Summer That Never Was

Gallows View is the first novel in Peter Robinson's best-selling Inspector Banks series. Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks has recently moved to the Yorkshire Dales from London to escape the stress of the metropolis. But he soon finds that life in the country is not quite as idyllic as he had imagined. A peeping Tom is frightening the women of Eastvale. Two glue-sniffing thugs are breaking into homes. An old woman may or may not have been murdered....

One foggy night, Deborah Harrison is found lying in the churchyard behind St Mary's, Eastvale. She has been strangled with the strap of her own school satchel. But Deborah was no typical 16-year old. Her father was a powerful financier who moved in the highest echelons of industry, defence, and classified information. And Deborah, it seemed, enjoyed keeping secrets of her own.

When two social workers investigating reports of child abuse appear at Brenda Scupham's door, her fear of authority leads her to comply meekly with their requests - even when they say that they must take her seven-year-old daughter Gemma away for tests. It is only when they fail to return Gemma the following day that Brenda realises something has gone terribly wrong.

When she's not digging up bones or other ancient objects, Ruth Galloway lectures at the University of North Norfolk. She lives happily alone in a remote place called Saltmarsh overlooking the North Sea and, for company; she has her cats Flint and Sparky, and Radio 4. When a child's bones are found in the marshes near an ancient site that Ruth worked on ten years earlier, Ruth is asked to date them.

When a troubled model falls to her death from a snow-covered Mayfair balcony, it is assumed that she has committed suicide. However, her brother has his doubts, and calls in private investigator Cormoran Strike to look into the case.Strike is a war veteran - wounded both physically and psychologically - and his life is in disarray. The case gives him a financial lifeline, but it comes at a personal cost: the more he delves into the young model's complex world, the darker things get - and the closer he gets to terrible danger...