The story begins with a stolen tractor, hardly a job for DCI Banks and his Homicide and Major Crimes team, but the new police commissioner has put rural crime high on her agenda.

How to become a vegetarian ... :)

A RABCK for chania in Finland. Enjoy !

Thank you, one of my favourite book series!

Oh yes, quite a put-off for meat... but otherwise another really good Banks!

Sending to schwester next!

Thank you! Arrived in Vienna today. I got an DCI Banks novel from my secret Santa and am now trying to read them all...
(reserved for Cross-patch when I´ve read it)

I´ve spent quite some Covid-months with DCI Banks and this is the last of the series I had at home.
I especially liked the Winsome-part, and I really did not know there are actually people going into caves for fun :-)
The book was a bit easy on the meat industry, I think. Of course I have not eaten meat for more than 20 years and might be a bit biased. Or realistic. As Jonathan Safran Foer put it in his book "Eating Animals": most people who eat meat (by the way he eats meat) suspect a nonfiction book called "Eating Animals" to contain things they don't want to know. Which is quite consistent with my experience, and rather interesting, I think. Of course you would not expect to kill a farm animal for food a cheerful activity, but that's not what I mean. For me personally it is not about whether we should be allowed to kill any animals at all (it is worth the thinking, but unrealistic, at least that's my opinion). But there is quite some room between living vegan and the modern meat industry, and I cannot stop wondering how veganism can be perceived as extreme while the meat industry is not. And back to the book: everything described (concerning the animals, not the murders of course) is far FAR less gruesome than all the nonfiction books you find on that topic. By too easy on the meat industry I mean: As when the guy in the abattoir where the gun was stolen says the tree-hugging vegetarians might think all butchers are psycho monsters but in fact they are just normal people doing a job to earn their money and like everywhere some are simply crazy. Well, well, this might be true in small places. Or decades ago, before industrialization of everything including meat. Because how come when the borders are closed because of Covid, suddenly we see the people who work in the meat factories are not at all citizens here but suddenly on the other side of the border? Locked out in lock down, needing special intervention to get back in to continue their work? If this was just a normal job? Which is not saying they are psycho monsters, but it tells you the working conditions must be bad enough.

sent on to Cross-patch

It has arrived in an enormous parcel from schwester. My thanks go to Barbara and all before. Hi and best wishes to you all during these difficult and strange times.

Abbatoirs aside, a very good Banks!

For a friend to read and release

Left at my line dancing group.