Many Rivers to Cross - Peter Robinson

By my count, Many Rivers to Cross is Peter Robinson’s twenty-sixth Inspector John Banks novel. I only discovered the series with book number twenty-five, Careless Love, a novel I very much enjoyed and was excited to have stumbled upon at my local library. From there, I decided to start reading the books in the order in which they were published, and I’ve now read the first five books in the series. Obviously, however, it’s going to take a few years for me to catch up with the series, so I’ve decided to read the latest ones when they are published rather than waiting that long to get to them.

 

And that brings me to Many Rivers to Cross.

 

 Imagine my surprise when I discovered what a foul mood author Peter Robinson is in these days and how he’s let that mood bleed so heavily into this latest Inspector Banks novel. Somewhere between pages three and five (depending on the version being read), Robinson makes clear how much he despises the American president, certain French politicians and their political stances, and most of all Brexit and anyone who dared vote for Britain to leave the European Union. Robinson has one of his two main characters speak words to this effect in the very first conversation in the book – a conversation that, in fact, will turn out to have nothing to do with the plot other than potentially supplying an alibi later in the story that is never requested with any seriousness anyway.

 

Most readers, I think, will recognize the conversation for what it is, a way for Robinson to blow a little steam. That becomes even more obvious in the last quarter of the book when the author twice describes a physically unattractive character by referencing vocal Brexit proponent Nigel Farage as someone the character rather closely resembles. I as a reader, and a fan of Robinson’s novels, get it. I understand which side of the political divide he is on, and I understand his frustration. What I don’t understand is Robinson’s failure to resist the urge to be so in your face about his feelings instead of using a more subtle, and ultimately much more effective, method to get his message across to readers.

 

Peter Robinson

The plot of Many Rivers to Cross is nothing new really, except for the way that Robinson emphasizes so strongly the inherent racism of so many of the characters in the novel, most of them, of course, being criminals - or elderly citizens who display their casual racism without even realizing that their manner of speaking could ever be considered racist by anyone hearing them speak. Everything revolves around a little Syrian boy whose dead body is found curled up inside a large trash bin. No one knows who the little boy is or where he is from, but it is obvious to investigators that he is “Middle Eastern.” And it is obvious that Peter Robinson believes that a substantial percentage of Brits are not really going to worry much about the murder of a little boy with skin darker than theirs, and he wants to make sure his readers get that point.

 

One thing leads to another, as it always does when Banks and his team start pulling on loose threads and trying to reconnect them in a way that identifies a murderer, and before long they are immersed in a world of sex trafficking, drug dealing, Albanian mobsters, crooked real estate deals, and wild parties at the home of a prominent Eastvale businessman. The chase is fun, as it always is, because Robinson is particularly good at creating a living, breathing environment for the fictional Eastvale and he populates it with believable characters, both major and minor.

 

Bottom Line: Many Rivers to Cross is a book with a heavy message, one that needs to be told. Unfortunately, Robinson’s approach is so heavy-handed that it even makes the ending of his novel a very predictable one. Too, I have to wonder how many readers tossed the novel aside after completing only the first chapter, either having been offended by the words Robinson has one character speak in that chapter, or because they were hoping for a book that would help them escape for a few hours the constant drumbeat of political disharmony that has so divided our world and our lives. The author may have overplayed his hand in this one.