Peter Robinson

Successful crime writer and creator of the Inspector Banks series of novels...

Peter Robinson, author of over a dozen novels featuring Inspector Banks, was born in Castleford, Yorkshire, in 1950. After getting his BA Honours Degree in English literature at the University of Leeds, he went to Canada and first took his MA in English and Creative Writing at the University of Windsor, with Joyce Carol Oates as his tutor, then a Ph.D. in English at York University.

Peter Robinson's breakthrough book, in the UK, was the comparatively recent Banks novel Aftermath (2002), which means that there is an extensive backlist for new readers to explore (Inspector Banks made his debut in 1987). Interviewed about writing the series, Robinson has said that the Yorkshire setting for his crime novels was initially a way of dealing with nostalgia and homesickness for the places that he grew up in. Eastvale, Banks' fictional market town, is based to some degree on Richmond.

As the series has progressed, Robinson has taken care to delve into the background and personalities of his characters. Career-minded Chief Constable Jeremiah "Jimmy Riddle"; who usually works to a political agenda driven by PR - antagonising Banks in the process - comes to the Inspector for help in Cold is the Grave when his daughter runs away to London. A throwaway comment about a childhood friend of Banks' who disappeared in the 1960s in Dead Right becomes focus of the major investigation in The Summer that Never Was.

Now based in Toronto, Peter Robinson has become one of the stalwarts of modern detective procedural fiction. He is highly rated by his own peers - authors such as Ian Rankin ("A writer at the height of his powers"), Dennis Lehane ("Chilling, evocative, deeply nuanced works of art") and Stephen King ("This may be the best series of British novels since the works of Patrick O'Brian").

Fact file

Name: Peter Robinson

Date of birth: 1950

Place of birth: Castleford

Current Home: Toronto

Education: University of Windsor (Can.), University of York

Similar Authors: Ian Rankin, Stephen Booth, Reg Hill, Mark Billingham