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Content snapshot
Flag an inaccuracy →What's in this book, at a glance — five things readers want to know before they start.
Violence
Some
A historical murder; the World War II timeline includes wartime violence
Language
Some
Some strong language; period register for both timelines
Sexual Content
Barely any
Adult romantic relationships in wartime; some difficult content involving assault
Substance Use
Barely any
Wartime drinking and post-war psychology
Emotional Intensity
A lot
What women's lives looked like in wartime England and what happened when they couldn't fit back into peacetime; the specific vulnerability of women whose stories were never told
What this book is about
A drought has lowered a Yorkshire reservoir enough to reveal the ruins of a village that was flooded in the 1940s — and inside one of the ruins, a skeleton that turns out to be a woman murdered in 1944. Banks, on sick leave after the events of the previous novel, takes the case informally, piecing together a woman's life during wartime Yorkshire from letters, memories, and the testimony of aging survivors. Peter Robinson's tenth Inspector Banks novel is his most historically ambitious — the alternating timelines work elegantly — and one of his most moving in its portrait of women in wartime.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
the 1944 timeline includes assault on a woman
tenth of the Banks series
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