Tuesday, July 31, 2007

PIECE OF MY HEART by Peter Robinson (2006)

My greatest surprise in this Inspector Banks mystery is that nowhere do we read the lyrics in Joplin's refrain that gives the novel its title. PIECE OF MY HEART follows parallel narratives thirty years apart. In 1969, there's been a brutal murder at an outdoor rock concert of a beautiful young woman named Linda Lofthouse. And, it seems that the killer has a penchant for painting little blue cornflowers on his victim's faces.

More than thirty years later Banks investigates an equally gruesome murder of a freelance music journalist who seemed to be researching a controversial piece about the band the Mad Hatters. Discovering how the murders are linked provides Banks with difficult truths about the past and the present.

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