Peter Robinson--Finding the Right Place

DEBORAH CROMBIE:  What a treat for me today to host one of

my idols of British crime fiction, Peter Robinson. If you're not familiar with Peter's novels featuring Yorkshire Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks, you've perhaps seen the very successful TV adaptation of the books. But I've been a fan since long before Banks arrived on television--since, in fact, before I met Peter at my first Bouchercon in Pasadena in 1991. He was very gracious to me, a wanna-be writer, and encouraged me. I sold my first novel five months later. 

Since then, I consider myself fortunate to have had the opportunity to do panels and book signings with Peter (and to have had a pint with him at his local--as in pub--in Toronto.)  He remains as gracious and talented as ever, and the advent of a new Banks novel goes down on my calendar as a greatly anticipated treat.

THE CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION is Peter Robinson at his finest,  a superb tale of mystery and murder that takes Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks and his colleague DI Annie Cabbot back to the early 1970s—a turbulent time of politics, change, and radical student activism—to solve a case that has been decades in the making.

The body of disgraced college lecturer Gavin Miller is found on an abandoned railway line by a woman out walking her dog early one winter morning. In the four years since Miller's dismissal for sexual misconduct, he's been living like a hermit, listening to music from his college days and existing as frugally as possible on the outskirts of a small village. So where did he get the five thousand pounds found in his pocket?

Leading the investigation, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks begins to suspect that the victim's past may be connected to his death. Forty years earlier the dead man attended a university that was a hotbed of militant protest and divisive, bitter politics. And as the seasoned detective well knows, some grudges are never forgotten—or forgiven.

Just as Banks is about to break the case open, his superior warns him to back off or risk losing the promotion he has been promised. Yet Banks isn't about to stop, even if it means risking his career altogether. He's certain there's more to the mystery than meets the eye, and more skeletons to uncover before the case can finally be closed.

According to Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “[Children of the Revolution is] well-plotted and satisfying right to the end....Robinson has won many awards for his Detective Banks novels, and with this latest, he demonstrates his mastery of the craft.”  

One of the things that makes Robinson's novels so gripping is the strong sense of place they convey, and here's Peter to tell us a bit about how he creates such spine-tingling atmosphere.

PETER ROBINSON: Sometimes you can feel like a real idiot for not realising something about the way you write until it hits you right between the eyes. I learned a lesson writing CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION, my 24^th novel, that taught me just how little I know about my own writing process.

Unusually for me, I had plenty of ideas about characters, plot and themes but I just couldn’t get started. I’m not an outliner, so I usually don’t know where a story’s going to take me. I generally begin with the opening scene of the book and just go on from there. This time, I had a whole department store full of treats set out ahead, but I couldn’t find a way in.

Then one day I went for a walk in North Yorkshire with a friend who seeks out walks you don’t find in the tourist guides, and we came across this disused railway line. It felt like a very lonely, isolated place to me, and I realised immediately that this is where the body is found, this is the opening scene, the way in I’ve been looking for. And from then on it all fell into place.

The place may not be in the opening scene, but it usually is, and more often than it is where the body is found. There may be more than one important place in a book. In WATCHING THE DARK I had the police convalescence centre ( in reality a hotel), the abandoned farm complex on the moors and the Estonian city of Tallin, with its cobbled streets and narrow winding alleys, where I was fortunate enough to be teaching summer school that year.

Even back as far as CAEDMON’S SONG (U.S. title THE FIRST CUT) I had an idea for a story about a woman who survived a serial killer’s attack and tracked him down, but I couldn’t get the story moving until I approached Whitby over the North York Moors one beautiful day and saw the blue sea stretched out below, the ruined abbey brooding over the scene from its hill, fishing boats bobbing in the harbour, their masts flashing in the sun. That was where Martha arrived in the first scene of the book, and much of story played out in its streets and along the coastline..

IN A DRY SEASON became a reality when I visited Thrushcross Reservoir during a drought and thought what a wonderfully eerie place to find a body. Maybe not everyone thinks that way on walks through beautiful countryside, but then I’m a crime writer!

I used to enjoy a walk through a small hidden dale, and every time I went past a derelict house with an overgrown garden I used to pause and look closely at it, looking for signs of life, trying to imagine the lives that had been lived there. Eventually it became Grace’s house in BEFORE THE POISON. I may change certain details about the places, but until I stumble across the right one in my wanderings my books are only a vague cloud of words and images beyond my grasp.

DEBS: Peter will be checking in today to chat and to answer questions about his books and his research. Peter, as you will see from the bio below, is, like me, a transatlantic writer; he lives in Toronto but sets his books in Yorkshire. Unlike me, however, he has the advantage of being British by birth and not just by imagination! However, I would love to know if Peter suffers, like me, from occasional culture-confusion...

Peter Robinson’s internationally best-selling and award-winning Inspector Banks novels have been named “Best Book of the Year”by Publishers Weekly, a “Notable Book” by the New York Times, and a “Page Turner of the Week” by  People. Robinson was born and brought up in Yorkshire, and now divides his time between North America and the UK.