FINAL ACCOUNT

Whoever said accountants lead boring lives never met Keith Rothwell, Yorkshire squire, owner or part-owner of 15 businesses, and victim of a no-nonsense shotgun execution in his own barn. Chief Inspector Alan Banks's digging reveals that Rothwell was even less boring than that. Not only were he and Leeds solicitor Daniel Clegg laundering money for a Caribbean dictator, but he was leading a double life as one Robert Calvert, the free- spirited gambler and lothario who'd seduced Pamela Jeffreys, a Pakistani violist Banks finds himself lusting after. Now Clegg, Calvert, and Jeffreys are all being stalked by a murderous pair of thugs clearly different from the pair Rothwell's daughter identified as his killers. The only clue to the connection among the two pairs is a reloaded shotgun shell whose homemade wadding includes a snippet from a magazine you wouldn't find in just any home. Robinson's seventh procedural maintains the sterling consistency of Wednesday's Child (1994) and all the others. If the tangle of clues is a little predictable, the final confrontation makes up for it all.