Wednesday's child

Robinson may be one of the most underrated writers of British mysteries today. His hero, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks, is a thoughtful, intelligent, humane cop who often doubts his ability to cope successfully with the demands of career, marriage, and parenthood. Robinson's descriptions of police procedures are thorough and knowledgeable, and he paints a lively, vivid picture of rural Yorkshire. Best of all, in each successive book, Robinson shows real growth in the complexity of his characters, in his creative, thought-provoking plots, and in the philosophical battles Banks wages in dealing with crime both petty and vicious. Here Banks is investigating the kidnapping of seven-year-old Gemma Scupham, who has been taken from her neglectful mum by two people posing as social workers. It's as if the child had disappeared from the face of the earth; but despite the lack of clues and the daunting possibility that Gemma is already dead, Banks pokes and prods, questions and probes, until the pieces start to fall together and he finds himself confronting one of the most ruthless villains he has encountered in his entire career. Provocative, mesmerizing, and memorable, this chilling story is a must for mystery collections of every size. ~--Emily MeltonNON-BOXED REVIEWS

There's precious little time for Yorkshire Inspector Alan Banks's worries about his distant wife or teenage daughter; he's hot on the trail of the couple, plausibly masquerading as social workers, who took 7-year-old Gemma Scupham away from her slatternly mother. When a family touring the nearby lead mines discovers, not Gemma's body, but that of ex-convict Carl Johnson, the trail seems cold; but after Banks' tense, inconclusive confrontation with Johnson's boss, diamond magnate Adam Harkness, and the disheartening discovery of Gemma's clothing thirty miles away, Constable Susan Gay ties Johnson to Gemma- -and to Jeremy ``Smiler'' Chivers, a grinning psychopath who seems all too good a suspect. Expert lesser work from Robinson (Past Reason Hated, 1993, etc.): an unsurprising but thoroughly accomplished British procedural that puts its lowlife denizens through their paces with all the withering mastery of a lion tamer.