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    Birthday Dance
    Birthday Dance
    Birthday Dance
    Ebook27 pages21 minutes

    Birthday Dance

    By Peter Robinson

    3.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    From the New York Times bestselling author comes a riveting collection of short fiction, marked by the piercing psychological insight and brilliant characterization that are hallmarks of his acclaimed novels.

    Ever since the publication of his first mystery featuring Detective Inspector Alan Banks, Peter Robinson has been steadily building a reputation for compulsively readable and perceptive novels that probe the dark side of human nature. Plumbing the territory that he has so successfully staked, The Price of Love and Other Stories includes two novellas and several stories featuring the Yorkshire policeman at his finest.

    In the novella “Going Back,” never before published in the United States, Banks returns home for a family reunion, only to find it taking a decidedly sinister turn. In “Like a Virgin,” written especially for this volume, Banks revisits the period in his life and the terrible crime that led him to leave London for Eastvale. And in between, the disparate motives that move us to harm one another, from love and jealousy to greed and despair, are all explored with fascinating depth.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateSep 29, 2009
    ISBN9780061979040
    Birthday Dance
    Author

    Peter Robinson

    One of the world’s most popular and acclaimed writers, Peter Robinson was the bestselling, award-winning author of the DCI Banks series. He also wrote two short-story collections and three stand-alone novels, which combined have sold more than ten million copies around the world. Among his many honors and prizes were the Edgar Award, the CWA (UK) Dagger in the Library Award, and the Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy Martin Beck Award.

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    Reviews for Birthday Dance

    3.5/5

    82 ratings13 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Enjoyable book of short stories, Banks makes a couple of appearances, and in Like A Virgin, we see him in his final case in London before moving North. Interesting too to see Robinson tackling tales on the other side of the Atlantic.
    • 4/5
      This is a good selection of short stories and a novella. They are not al Alan banks stories, but a wide variety of other reads. Most enjoyable.
    • 3/5
      A collection of stories by Peter Robinson, some of which are featuring Inspector Banks. I had not heard of this author or his detective before, and although I don't usually enjoy collections of short stories, I enjoyed these well enough. Robinson is good at writing interesting characters, even if it is all a bit darker than I prefer. It is missing the dark humor I enjoy in my mysteries. Also, there was never much mystery for me as to who the bad guy was, but perhaps that isn't the point. Perhaps the point is the journey, as they say. I would recommend it as a good read, but not a book I will read twice.
    • 5/5
      Book Description
      From the New York Times bestselling author comes a riveting collection of short fiction, marked by the piercing psychological insight and brilliant characterization that are hallmarks of his acclaimed novels.

      Ever since the publication of his first mystery featuring Detective Inspector Alan Banks, Peter Robinson has been steadily building a reputation for compulsively readable and perceptive novels that probe the dark side of human nature. Plumbing the territory that his work has so successfully staked, The Price of Love and Other Stories includes two novellas and several stories featuring the Yorkshire policeman at his finest. In these stories, the disparate motives that move humans to harm one another, from love and jealousy to greed and despair, are all explored with fascinating depth.

      My Review
      I enjoyed these 2 novellas and several short stories with themes of love and murder. Lots of twists and turns and unexpected endings. If you like reading the Inspector Banks series, you will enjoy this book.
    • 3/5
      A mixed bag of short stories and novellas, a couple of Banks which are the strongest, but some rather strange.
    • 3/5
      This is a collection of 12 short stories, three of which feature Inspector Banks. The third Banks story is the best. Of the other 9, a couple are forgettable. This is a good read and a good introduction the the Inspector Banks series for someone wanting to know if they would like to read the Inspector Banks books.
    • 5/5
      I read mainly crime fiction novels but occasionally a short story anthology is brought to my attention by a fellow reader. Short stories often give the reader a different view of a writer's talents. Among my favourite writers who have also produced short stories are Ian Rankin and Ruth Rendell. I cut my teeth on the short stories of Somerset Maugham and Charles Dickens.

      These eleven stories first appeared in the first decade of the 21st century. Only three of them, one of them a longish novella, feature Robinson's detective Alan Banks. The author says that most of them "were written at the request of one editor or another" and at the end of the anthology he gives detail about what led to the writing of each one. He says that he thinks of the stories as challenges, a chance to explore something he hadn't explored before. He says that he finds short stories difficult to write, and that they often take him into uncharted territory.

      The story I liked best The Price of Love, the one that gives the anthology its name. Tommy Burford, whose police constable father was recently killed in the line of duty, has discovered something quite strange in the room of Uncle Arthur, his mother's new boyfriend.

      It is worth it after you finish each story to take a moment to reflect, to ask who in this story, as the subtitle says, paid with his or her life.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed it almost more than one of the Banks novels. Some nice twists in the end. Also the Banks shorts show him as a bit more rounded, explaining what isn't always apparent in the novels.
    • 2/5
      Something of a curate's egg. The title story and the Inspector Banks novella "Like a virgin" are decent crime stories, but the rest of the collection is pretty mediocre. Several of the stories ought to have been buried somewhere and forgotten after their initial magazine publication, especially the opening story, a Yorkshire mockingbird-killer of absolutely leaden obviousness and total absence of period atmosphere. How could any sane publisher include that in a book and put it first where potential buyers would see it...?

      People keep telling me that Robinson is a great crime writer, but I wouldn't go any further than "competent" on the evidence of the couple of books I've seen so far. He doesn't seem to have any particular quality to his voice or his characters that makes him special. It's just all as bland as Inspector Banks's taste in music. There's no real passion, no irony, no humour. But obviously other readers find something in him. Maybe I'm missing the point somewhere.
    • 4/5
      pretty good stories. early inspector banks drank way too much, cheated on wifey and seems really unhappy.
    • 5/5
      These are some of the best short stories I have come across. Extremely well written.
    • 4/5
      Great short stories and I loved revisiting Banks.
    • 5/5
      Peter Robinson is one of my favourite mystery authors. His Inspector Banks series now numbers 19!

      The Price of Love is a collection of short stories released by McClelland and Stewart. When I started to read, I planned to read one or two, put the book down and come back to it -that's the beauty of a short story collection. Unfortunately, this book was like a bag of chips for me - I couldn't read just one or two, but had to finish it off . And it was done too quickly and I wanted more!


      There are two Banks stories and a novella included. One is a great Christmas tale originally published in a small run of 350 as a gift to a publisher's friends. The novella fills in the Bank's jump from London to Eastvale. As always, the crimes are interesting and well plotted. But it is the character development that makes this series such an addicting read. Banks is human, fallible and it has been fascinating over the years to watch his life unfold.

      It was intriguing to read stories told in a different voice than Banks. Many were originally published in anthologies Robinson has participated in . There are afternotes at the end explaining the origins of each tale. They range from a WWII soldier falsely accused of murder and the investigator powerless to stop the wheels of justice. Shadows on the Water has a WWII soldiers telling childhood stories while hiding in their trenches. The ending caught me completely unawares. Robinson always includes many references to music in his writing. (Check out the playlists he has compiled for the Banks books) The Magic of Your Touch is a chilling little tale dealing with the songwriting process. One of my favourites was Walking the Dog - a wronged spouse and the revenge they take. All in all, there wasn't one I didn't enjoy!

      Robinson currently lives in Toronto, Canada and it's always a thrill to read of locales you've visited yourself. College Ave, Danforth and The Beaches provide some of the settings for stories.

      Robinson is a consummate storyteller. Fans new and old will want to add this one to their collection

    Book preview

    Birthday Dance - Peter Robinson

    Birthday Dance

    Short Story

    Peter Robinson

    For Sheila

    Contents

    Introduction

    Begin Reading

    Afternote

    About the Author

    Other Books by Peter Robinson

    Credits

    Copyright

    About the Publisher

    Introduction

    For someone who considers himself primarily a novelist, I seem to have written rather a lot of short stories. I have also been very fortunate in that my publishers want to publish them in collection form, which induces a retrospective frame of mind in me as I gather these tales together and prepare them for publication.

    Most of the stories in this collection were written at the request of one editor or another. I know that sounds rather mercenary, and that, in the Romantic view of art, the writer is supposed to work from pure inspiration. But I think of the stories as challenges, and sometimes a challenge can bring out the best in a person, or at least it can bring to the surface something he didn’t know he had, something he hadn’t explored before. And that is very much the case in this collection.

    I’m not going to go into details here about the content or origins of any of these stories. I’m saving that for the afternotes because I don’t want to spoil anything for those readers who, like me, want to know as little as possible about a story or novel they are about to read. I will say, though, that some of these requests for stories opened up new directions for me, took me places I would not normally have gone, and forced me to dig deep into

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