Caedmon's Song Book

Steadily, inexorably, Peter Robinson has been building a rock-solid following for his highly accomplished crime novels--and it's not hard to see why. Books like his latest, Caedmon's Song, have all the requisite page-turning compulsiveness, but Robinson freights in a layer of psychological penetration that many in the genre strive for but few achieve. A university student has unwisely decided to walk though a night-shrouded park. She is savagely assaulted and wakes in hospital with her memory of the attack wiped clean. Through her tortured consciousness, impressions slowly begin to appear: memories of her attackers--there were two--begin to coalesce. Robinson's sympathy and understanding for the anguish of the student, Kirsten, is detailed with much understated skill and we become as keen as she is to crack the identity of her attackers. But this is only one of Robinson's plot strands: his other protagonist, Martha Browne, has made her way to the historic seaside town of Whitby with a hidden agenda. Outwardly she is an author doing research for a forthcoming book, but beneath the surface she is tracking down, with steely determination, a malign figure. Who is this mysterious quarry? And what is the connection with the hospitalised student? Robinson is in no hurry to make these connections and the delicious frustration for the reader only increases the determination to read on. While the plotting here has precisely the kind of jewel-like precision to be found in such previous Robinson titles as The Summer That Never Was and Aftermath, he's clearly not content to rest with the level of observation that distinguished those books: here, the pertinent comments on society and our attitude to criminals never derail the storytelling panache. Instead they act as the kind of shoring-up that lends weight and power to crime novels. --Barry ForshawRead More