Children Of The Revolution by Peter Robinson

 

DCI Alan Banks is called out to a murder.  A man is sprawled on the railroad tracks, an obvious fall from the parapet above.  Although not much older than Banks, the malnourished man appears decades older.  It's surprising as the team discovers that the victim was a former college instructor but had become a recluse and an alcoholic.  It's soon determined that his fall was the result of murder not accident.

Who could have wanted to kill such a sad man and how was he found with five thousand pounds on him?  The team soon finds that he was fired from his college professorship when two girls accused him of inappropriate actions.  Some believed them while others thought he was the victim of false allegations.  Was this the answer?

As the man's phone calls are traced, another surprise is revealed.  Shortly before his death, he called Ronnie Bellamy who is extremely wealthy and married to a lord.  What could this call be about?  Surely, two members on the opposite ends of the social scale couldn't have anything in common.  Or could they?  Bellamy was rich enough to be blackmailed and Banks and his team discover that the two went to the same university.  Are the roots of the murder to be found forty years back?  

This is number twenty-one in the Alan Banks series.  Banks is being pushed by his superiors to retire or take a promotion that would have him in the field far less.  As he mulls this, the bodies start to mount as secrets are revealed.  I will be sad to get to the end of this series as the characters have grown over the length of the series and now feel like old friends.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.