Innocent Graves
Innocent Graves is the eighth Inspector Banks novel by Canadian writer Peter Robinson. It was first published in 1996 by Viking Press and has since been reprinted. The book is part of the Inspector Banks series, coming after Dry Bones That Dream and before Dead Right.
The story earned praise: Publishers Weekly named it one of the best mysteries of the year; it was nominated for the 1996 Hammett Prize and won the 1997 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel.
Creation notes: Robinson initially wrote a 1990 short story titled Innocence about Terry Reed, who was accused but later cleared of murdering a schoolgirl. He tried turning Reed's story into a full-length novel from Reed's point of view, but the publisher rejected it. He decided the material would work better with DI Banks, and rewrote it as Innocent Graves with Banks as the lead and Reed renamed as Owen.
Innocence later appeared in Not Safe After Dark (1998) in short-story form; its introduction explains this development. The TV adaptation of Innocence was heavily edited and bore little resemblance to the book. Among changes: the victim's name became Ellie Clayton, the crime setting shifted from a school to a theatre group, and the suspects included Ellie's father, his business partner, his one-man crime partner, and her theatre tutor, rather than a vicar, his wife, or an ex-lover. The episode also drew more on the actions of DC Ken Blackstone than on Jimmy Riddle.
A German translation appeared in 2004 as Der unschuldige Engel, translated by Andree Heese, published by Ullstein.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 22:52 (CET).