His latest one, Stonemouth opens with just one word: "Clarity." Stonemouth is an estuary north of Aberdeen and the principal character of the book, Stewart Gilmour, returns there after five years of exile to attend a funeral.
His real motive later becomes obvious: to seek clarity in his life.
He left the town drummed out by one of the two ruling local mafia families and it takes some time for the reader to find out exactly why.
Gilmour seems to be seeking the answer to the same question, while reacquainting himself with former friends and enemies and reminiscing about aspects of his past.
It is beautifully written prose, but the plot is a little tantalising as secrets are very slowly revealed, This is more of a character study than a mystery thriller and it takes time for clarity to be developed.
An interesting observation made by Gilmour is his recollection of a remark that "one of the main mistakes people make is thinking that everybody is basically like they are themselves."
So at last he seeks to understand other people's points of view.
The town does not seem too menacing and the read becomes a reasonably enjoyable but ambling romp.
We first meet Gilmour standing on the entry bridge to the town - where a large number of suicides have occurred.
Or were they suicides? It soon becomes known that people who cross either the Murstons or their rivals, the MacAvett family, are dealt with very sharply.
And Gilmour himself is very much at risk, even though tolerated as a funeral guest.
Banks mines seams of dark comedy and tense passages running through his novel, while slowly revealing how Gilmour came to be the outcast.
But he also introduces a love interest: how the hero might find his way back into the affections of his former fiancee.
She was a Murston and the wedding was cancelled when he was run out of the town just a week before the planned nuptials.
But now Joe Murston, her grandfather, has died.
There may be room for reconciliation?
Along the way Banks gives an interesting portrait of a modern but fictional Scottish small town.
Geoff Adams is a former editor of the ODT.
