Children of the Revolution

The body of an elderly man has been found at the bottom of an abandoned railway cutting.  For some reason, the old man had five thousand pounds in cash in his pocket.  For this reason DCI Alan Banks has been called in.

The post-mortem reveals that the victim had been beaten before his death.  At a team meeting afterwards news is shared that the victim had plans which involved spending money; much more than the five thousand.  Banks' team begin to learn things about the victim; he had lost his job as a professor because he had been accused of asking a female student for sex.  Nothing was proven about the allegation, but it was enough to sack him.

Coincidences point towards a member of the gentry, Lady Chalmers, and when Banks questions her for a second time, he is warned off by his superiors.  This only serves to get his dander up.  However, it doesn't prevent his team from pursuing other leads.  Things keep coming back to the early 70s when the victim was at university, yet at the same time tied to events just a few years previous to the murder.

When Lady Chalmers is involved in an automobile accident, Banks wonders if another auto might have caused it.  What the accident reveals, however points Banks in an entirely different direction.

Author Peter Robinson has written an excellent murder mystery with plenty of plot twists, not revealing the murderer and reasons behind the killings until the final pages.  Hard to put down.