Close To Home by Peter Robinson

 

When Alan Banks was fourteen, like most teenage boys he had a gang of friends.  They played football, listened to music, checked out girls and just hung out at each others' homes.  Of them all, Banks was closest to Graham Marshall.  Then, a few weeks after Banks had an encounter near the river with an aggressive man, Graham went missing.  Did he run away?  Had he been murdered?  Now, all these years later, bones have been found and identified as Graham.  Although the body isn't in Bank's district, he volunteers to help with the case.

There is also a case going on at home.  Another teenage boy, this one the stepson of a famous footballer, has gone missing.  Luke was a quiet boy, interested in literature and music with not much use for sports. When Luke's body is found floating in the water,  Annie Cabbot is assigned the case and Banks works it also.  There are hints that Luke had a girlfriend that no one can identify and that there  was tension at home.  Can these two cases of murdered teenage boys be solved?

This is number thirteen in the Alan Banks series.  The reader gets to see more about Bank's background and his relationship with his parents and brother.  Banks meets a new woman, the officer in charge of the Graham Marshall case and since he and Annie are no longer dating, he starts a relationship with this new woman.  At the end, both cases are solved along with a larger issue of police corruption and gangster involvement.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.