A Dedicated Man is the second novel in the Inspector Banks series. A local historian has been murdered in the Yorkshire Dales. He was well-liked and there seems to be no obvious motives or suspects. Banks must dig into the dead man’s past if there are no leads in the present.

Like other books in the series, this is a competent well-written police procedural, partly seen through Banks’ eyes and partly through the eyes of some of the locals. Robinson is an expatriate York­shire­man with a fondness for his homeland and for his characters.