2008-04-21 Extremely flat characters

Having read an article in a Dutch newspaper about Peter Robinson in which he was introduced as the successor to Colin Dexter, Ruth Rendell etc, I thought I might give him a try. What a disappointment it was. I cannot understand why Dennis Lehane thinks "The novels of Peter Robinson are chilling, evocative, deeply nuanced works of art." I found the characters extremely flat, improbable, wooden and inconsistent - you don't get the idea at all that you start to know them while you read the book. For instance when Inspector Banks goes to Canada and meets a local colleague he first gets very angry with him for hardly any reason at all and then suddenly they become close friends.
And the plot? Well, mediocre at best.
I think the thing I liked best was the description of the Yorkshire landscape in the beginning of the story.
When I first read about Robinson I thought here finally was an author again all of whose books I might want to buy at once, like it happenend with Colin Dexter, Henning Mankell, John Harvey, Robert Goddard and, of course, Terry Pratchett. But it isn't. Sorry.