Watching the Dark

This egalley is only available to Canadian NetGalley users. Watching the Dark will be published in the US by William Morrow in February 2013.

When Detective Inspector Bill Reid is found murdered in the tranquil grounds of the St Peter's Police Treatment Centre, and compromising photographs are discovered in his room, DCI Banks is called in to investigate. Because of the possibility of police corruption, he is assigned an officer from Professional Standards, Inspector Joanna Passero, to work closely with him, and he soon finds himself and his methods under scrutiny. It emerges that Reid's murder may be linked to the disappearance of an English girl called Rachel Hewitt, in Tallinn, Estonia, six years earlier. The deeper Banks looks into the old case, the more he begins to feel that he has to solve the mystery of Rachel's disappearance before he can solve Reid's murder, though Inspector Passero has a different agenda. When Banks and Passero travel to Tallinn to track down leads in the dark, cobbled alleys of the city's Old Town, it soon become clear that that someone doesn't want the past stirred up. Meanwhile, DI Annie Cabbot, just back at work after a serious injury, is following up leads in Eastvale. Her investigations take her to the heart of a migrant labour scam involving a corrupt staffing agency and a loan shark who preys on the poorest members of society. As the action shifts back and forth between Tallinn and Eastvale, it soon becomes clear that crimes are linked in more ways than Banks imagined, and that solving them may put even more lives in jeopardy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Yorkshire-born PETER ROBINSON, a long-time Toronto resident, is one of the world's top writers of crime fiction and a winner of numerous awards, including the Edgar Award; the British Dagger in the Library Award; the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière; the Palle Rosenkrantz Award; and, several Arthur Ellis Awards. In 2010, he was given the Crime Writers of Canada's Derrick Murdoch Award for his outstanding contribution to crime fiction, the Harbourfront Festival Prize for a body of work, and he was also awarded an honorary degree by the University of Windsor. His novels are published around the world and have been translated into nineteen languages.