Robinson has been writing his hugely popular Inspector Banks novels for more than two decades. When we first met him in 1987 he had recently transferred to Eastvale with his young family. The sordid events leading up to his departure from London, burnt out and troubled, are recounted in the excellent ‘Like a Virgin’, the novella serving as the focus for Robinson’s second collection of stories.

The remainder of the book consists of various fictions written for magazines and anthologies, all showing the deft plotting we’ve come to love and expect.