Book Review

By Derryll White

Robinson, Peter (2006) ‘Piece of My Heart’

I have been vaguely aware of Peter Robinson’s work for some time.  We sell his novels in the mystery section  at Lotus Books.  I was browsing the Ystad Bibliotek looking for something different and Robinson started this novel with a quote from Francisco Goya: “Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the source of its marvels.”  How could I resist that clarion call to reason, words and wonderment.  I started the novel and was immediately removed in time and space to Britain, 1969, and Led Zeppelin and the rock music scene.  Adding further to my displacement was the mention of Charles Manson and the Family.

Robinson is very good at giving the reader a feel for the English countryside.  He catches the landscape nuances, the colours and textures of drystone walls, old mine tipples and country pubs.  One of my main disappointments is that he doesn’t look very hard at the social changes such as the English crisis of neighbourhood pubs closing at an alarming rate.  The whole is a bit elegiac.

I do like the way Robinson plays with time – two primary police characters with Detective Chadwick working in 1967-1970 while Inspector Alan Banks works a modern case that links.  It takes a bit to realize what is going on, but once the reader gets it figured out it is quite fun slipping and sliding through forty years, particularly if the reader was there for the Summer of Love.  I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.

‘Piece of My Heart’ is an easy read that does not challenge, does not make the reader think a lot.  Nor does the author comment at any length on the economic, social and political realities of England.  It is procedural, soft and in places interesting.  I will probably read another Peter Robinson book some time, but I won’t rush to it.

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Excerpts from the novel:

FRIENDS – “Losing friends is always sad,” said Banks, aware of how pathetic and pointless that observation was.  “It’s just one of those things, though.  When you first get together with someone it’s a great adventure, finding out stuff you’ve got in common.  You know, places you love, music, books.  Then the more you get to know them, the more you start to see other things.”

FASHION – There was enough candlelight behind the bar to see that it came to a stop about three inches above her low-rise jeans and broad studded belt, exposing a flat strip of pale white skin and a belly-button from which hung a short silver chain.  As far as Banks was concerned, the bare-midriff trend had turned every male over forty into a dirty old man.

POLITICS – “Behind it all you’ll find those French and German student anarchist groups, and behind them you’ll find Communists.  Need I spell it out, sir?  The Russians.”  He puffed at his pipe.  “There’s no doubt in my mind that some very unscrupulous people are directing events behind the scenes, unscrupulous FOREIGNERS for the most part.”

POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS – He had volunteered for the Green Howards in 1940 because his father had served with them in the first war, and spent the next five years killing first Japanese, and then Germans, while trying to stay alive himself.  After it was all over and he was back on Civvy Street in his demob suit, it took him six years to get over it.  Six years of dead-end jobs, bouts of depression, loneliness and hunger.

1970s IDEALS – Marriage and family are our traditional values.  A lot of kids today argue against them, say that’s why the world’s in the trouble it’s in.  War.  Famine.  Greed.  And girls, these days, think there ought to be more for them in life.  They want to work for example, and get paid as much as men for doing the same job.

AMERICA – “I live just outside Newcastle, near Alnwick, so it’s not too long a journey.”

“I thought you were all living in America?”

“That’s just the band, most of them, anyway.  I wouldn’t live there if you paid me a fortune in gold bullion.”

HISTORY – “It’s a bit far-fetched, isn’t it?” said Gervaise, when he had finished.  “I’ve always been a bit suspicious of events from so far in the past reaching forward into the present.  Sounds like the stuff of television.”

GOTHS – From what Banks had read about them, and the music he had heard, they seemed obsessed with death and suicide, as well as the undead and the ‘dark side’ in general, but they were passive and pacifist and concerned with social matters, such as racism and war.

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