The style & technique of PETER ROBINSON
Tony Rossiter looks at a writer whose Yorkshire roots are at the heart of his crime novels
Tony Rossiter
BEAT THE BESTSELLERS
Dan Callister/Writer Pictures
If you’re on the other side of the Atlantic and you feel homesick, what can you do about it? For Peter Robinson, the answer was simple: write a crime novel set in the Yorkshire Dales.
His resolve spawned a series that has grown to 24 bestselling novels featuring Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks (the 25th, Careless Love, comes out on 12 July). He has also written two collections of short stories and three standalone novels. The DCI Banks stories are police procedurals with a difference – noted for their deft characterisation, plots that force you to keep turning the pages, and convincing depiction of the Yorkshire Dales. The authentic ambience of the Dales is maintained and kept up to the minute by the time that Robinson, who lives mainly in Toronto, spends in Richmond, North Yorkshire.
How he began
Born in Leeds, as a youngster Peter spent a lot of time in the Dales. His father was a photographer who would take him into the Dales and then sit waiting for the right kind of light for taking photographs. Peter would spend that time reading and taking in details of the surrounding landscape. After obtaining a BA in English literature at Leeds University, he moved to Canada to take his MA, followed by a PhD in English. It was while studying for the PhD that he began to write crime. He was working on a dissertation on contemporary British poetry when he decided that he would let his hair down in his spare time by having a go at a crime novel. Of course, it was a totally different kind of writing from his academic work; he found it both liberating and exhilarating.