In the Dark Places

In the Dark Places
by Peter Robinson
HarperCollins, 2015.  326 pgs. Mystery

When an expensive tractor goes missing, no one in Inspector Banks' squad is excited about investigating a penny-ante crime in the countryside. But what begins as a mere theft blows up into something much worse when two young men from the neighborhood go missing, and a Afghanistan veteran's dog discovers a pool of human blood in an abandoned hangar. The two cases begin to converge after a gruesome discovery is made when a van goes off a cliff in a hailstorm, and Inspector Banks' team must try to find and stop a butcher (both meanings of the word) before he strikes again. Very few write police procedurals as well as Peter Robinson, and this 22nd entry in his Inspector Alan Banks series is filled with nuanced characterizations, a relentlessly swerving plot, and mayhem aplenty. You may not be a vegetarian when you begin this books, but you may convert by the end. Well done, but plenty gruesome.