Peter Robinson (novelist)


Peter Robinson is an English-Canadian crime writer. He is best known for his crime novels set in Yorkshire featuring Inspector Alan Banks. He has also published a number of other novels and short stories as well as some poems and two articles on writing.

Life and work

Robinson was awarded a BA Honours Degree in English Literature at the University of Leeds. He then emigrated to Canada in 1974 and took his MA in English and Creative Writing at the University of Windsor, with Joyce Carol Oates as his tutor, then a PhD in English at York University in Toronto. He is best known for the Inspector Banks series of novels set in the fictional Yorkshire town of Eastvale, which have been translated into nineteen languages, but also writes short stories and other novels.

Personal life

Robinson was born in Armley, Leeds, son of Clifford Robinson and Miriam Jarvis. Robinson emigrated to Canada to continue his studies after completing his first degree at the University of Leeds.
Robinson lives in the Beaches area of Toronto with his wife, Sheila Halladay, and he occasionally teaches crime writing at the University of Toronto's School of Continuing Studies. He has taught at a number of Toronto colleges and served as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Windsor, 1992-93.
Robinson and his wife live in Toronto, Canada, but they have a holiday cottage in Richmond, North Yorkshire.

Inspector Banks series

Set in the fictional English town of Eastvale in the Yorkshire Dales. Robinson has stated that Eastvale is modelled on Ripon and Richmond and is somewhere north of Ripon, close to the A1 road. A former member of the London Metropolitan Police, Inspector Alan Banks leaves the capital for a quieter life in the Dales. Since 2010 several of the novels have been adapted for television under the series title DCI Banks with Stephen Tompkinson in the title role.
  1. Gallows View
  2. A Dedicated Man
  3. A Necessary End
  4. The Hanging Valley
  5. Past Reason Hated
  6. Wednesday's Child
  7. Dry Bones that Dream
  8. Innocent Graves
  9. Dead Right
  10. In a Dry Season
  11. Cold is the Grave
  12. Aftermath
  13. The Summer that Never Was
  14. Playing with Fire
  15. Strange Affair
  16. Piece of My Heart
  17. Friend of the Devil
  18. All the Colours of Darkness
  19. Bad Boy
  20. Watching the Dark
  21. Children of the Revolution
  22. Abattoir Blues
  23. When the Music's Over
  24. Sleeping in the Ground
  25. Careless Love
  26. Many Rivers to Cross
  27. Not Dark Yet''

    Other works

Although Caedmon's Song is a standalone novella, it is related to Friend of the Devil.