Standing in the Shadows

It's a bit bittersweet to read this book, knowing it's most likely the last entry. But it's a strong one. The greatest mystery driving much of the story: what is the connection between the first-person entries from 1980 about a university student's murder and the discovery in 2019 of the skeleton of someone who died much more recently, found by archeologists in a farm field where a new highway is going in. The two story lines, one related by the murdered student's former boyfriend during the fraught era when the Yorkshire Ripper was at work and the other a third person account of the current investigation, seem to have nothing in common. But surely they must, and by the end of the novel we know how they are parts of the same story. returnreturnI enjoyed this novel quite a lot. The investigation is satisfyingly and realistically complex (whose skeleton is it? when did he die? basic questions that are difficult to answer as the case gets underway). The past murder has its own questions, but they're being asked by a young man who can't get any information from the cops. There's the moody setting of a community living in fear as a vicious serial killer goes undetected for years, the political involvement of a leftist activist at a time when the IRA was setting off bombs the Bader Meinhoff gang was seeking revolution through violence, and ultimately a government inquiry into police misconduct by Special Branch undercover units during the period. And then there's an occasional subtle nod toward contemporary politics in the UK, with even an old Tory friend of Banks's disgusted with BJ's antics. It all comes together in the end, when one of the characters says "Let me start at the beginning..." Too bad it's actually the end.