The twelfth in Peter Robinson's Inspector Alan Banks series, based in Yorkshire. A big book of 437 pages, with a story of serial sex murders which owes something to Fred and Rosemary West. Two police constables, one male the other female (mustn't call them WPCs now) are called to a 'domestic' and find more than they bargained for - the PC gets his throat cut and the female beats the perpetrator to death with her truncheon.
DI Banks enters the scene - literally - as an Acting Superintendent running the investigation of a string of missing girls and the full panoply of a police procedural story ensues. Alan Banks is a rather morbid, introspective guy, seemingly always full of guilt and pessimism, in spite of having a beautiful on-and-off girl-friend in DI Annie Cabbot and another admirer, Jenny Fuller, a psychologist and profiler of criminals.
As with all of this author's books, the writing is impeccable and it is a good long read. Perhaps a little too long in places, as here and there one wonders whether one has picked up a novel or a psychology textbook However, fans of Alan Banks will not be disappointed at Aftermath; the police procedures are set out in accurate detail, though his pathologist's lecture on head injuries owes a little to the 'Sherlock Holmes school of forensic medicine' in its over-interpretation - but even this can be taken to be authentic, when applied to some individuals! The book is thought-provoking as well as entertaining, as the theme of child abuse is central to the plot.