Playing With Fire by Peter Robinson

 

Two longboats have caught on fire and been destroyed.  When DCI Alan Banks gets there, he discovers that there are two casualties.  One was a fifty-something artist and on the other boat, a young drug addict has been killed.  The investigation shows that those killed were squatters, living in the derelict boats and that the fire was arson and therefore murder.  Several days later and a few miles away, a caravan is also torched and another man is killed.  Both men show signs of having been drugged with the same compound.  

There are lots of candidates.  It could be a firebug, someone who just likes to set fires and chose these run down structures randomly.  There was a young man who was living with the drug addict and he had been close to the caravan the night it went up in flames.  He accuses the woman's stepfather, saying that his girlfriend was a drug addict due to the man's abuse and that the stepfather had been trying to get her to move back home.  There was a secondhand bookseller who seemed to have ties to both the men.  The police call in an outside expert when it appears that there could have been an art fraud circle operating in the area and that the artist could be involved.  Who is the murderer and can Banks and his team catch him?

This is the fourteenth novel in the Alan Banks series.  Banks has a new girlfriend although he doesn't get to see her often as she is a policewoman in another district.  Annie Cabbot has a new love interest also and Banks is ashamed to find he is jealous.  Both throw themselves into the investigation and soon find a connection between the two male victims while other suspects can be eliminated.  The final solution is chilling and puts Banks himself in danger.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.