Peter Robinson: A life of mystery with my partner in crime

Peter Robinson has recently found himself in the middle of his very own mystery.

A few days ago, the crime writer behind the Inspector Banks novels, began receiving emails from Eastern Europe.

What started as a trickle turned into a steady stream, and while some have been straightforward requests for autographs, he's not yet been able to decipher the meaning of those written in Cyrillic script.

"I know my books are popular in Sweden and have done well in France and Holland, but I really can't explain this sudden flurry of interest from Slovenia and the Ukraine," says Robinson, who is back home in Yorkshire for a few weeks.

"Perhaps a job lot of Inspector Banks novels have been discovered in a warehouse somewhere. Sadly, I'm not ever likely to be able to translate the Cyrillic alphabet, so it looks set to remain a mystery."

Robinson has always been happy to take life as it comes. Growing up in 1950s' Castleford and later Armley, in Leeds, when he was in his twenties he left West Yorkshire to go travelling in North America. He was studying a creative writing course at the University of Windsor and fully intended to return to England, but while in Canada he met his future wife and decided to stay put.

At the time, he was writing mostly poetry, but a brief flirtation with crime led to the birth of the dogged and occasionally maudlin

Alan Banks.

The first book in the series, Gallows View, was published in 1987 and immediately won a loyal following of readers. Nearly a quarter of a century on, Bad Boy, the 19th book in the series, is due out this week, and while the intervening years have seen Banks's once happy marriage fall apart and his musical obsession deepen, much of the original elements remain.

The fictional setting of Eastvale borrows much from the market towns of the Yorkshire Dales and Banks's own frustrations with a modern world driven by materialism and a nostalgia for times gone by, continue to strike a chord.

"I was a young man when I started out and I honestly didn't know where life was going to take me," he says. "As it turns out, it has taken both me and Inspector Banks on a wonderful journey.

"In the beginning, he shared a lot in common with European detectives like Maigret, because that's what I happened to be reading a lot of at the time.

But when you're 19 books in, things change, and it's certainly true that Inspector Banks has become a lot more miserable over the years.

"It's inevitable, I suppose, given the things that have happened to him. However, while he has become more of a loner, he hasn't lost his sense of idealism. Despite his flaws, it's that moral core which makes him attractive, I think, to readers."

Bad Boy sees Banks treading in the author's own footsteps, travelling to America where trouble inevitably follows. There's the usual mix of personal and professional angst, a helping of violence and a race against time.

"I never really know where each new book is going to take me," says Robinson. "I start with a body and let it all flow from there. If I'm lucky, by the end I've got a reasonable plot, but the ending is as much a surprise to me as I hope it is for the reader.

"Occasionally, I get the desire to do something completely different. It's not about getting away from the character, but more about stepping away from writing about police investigations. I'm working

on a non-series book at the moment and I do find a break from Banks helps keep the stories fresh."

While very much focused on what happens next, in recent months Robinson has had cause to delve back into the past.

A long-awaited TV version of his 12th Banks novel, Aftermath, is in production and will, hopefully, fill the void left by the retirement from the small screen of David Jason's Jack Frost and Reginald Hill's Dalziel and Pascoe.

The two-part drama, starring Stephen Tompkinson, is due to be screened in the autumn and Left Bank Pictures are hoping it will just be the start of Banks's television career.

"People talk of how difficult it is to get the money for new dramas, and it's true," says Robinson. "The idea for a television adaptation has been around for years, but it was a real struggle to get it off the ground. Finally, the funding was sorted and I was lucky enough to go on the Leeds set to see how it was all coming along.

"As a writer, you can't be precious about adaptations. I read the first script well in advance and while they had made changes, you have to learn to put your trust in the professionals.

"As for Stephen, I think he does capture the essence of Banks. He's far too tall, of course, but I can't really hold his height against him."

While living much of his adult life in Canada, Robinson never entirely severed links with Yorkshire. Book tours have regularly bought him back to the county, he's recently launched a scholarship at his old alma mater, Leeds University, and having now bought a flat in Richmond, he tries to spend at least a few months of the year here.

"The scholarship was really a matter of giving something back to a place which had given me a break," he says. "I really didn't have the best qualifications from school. My A-levels weren't the grades they perhaps should have been, but when I went to see the head of the English department, he welcomed me into the fold.

"The bursary was my own little way of encouraging people who wanted to study English literature and who perhaps have an interest in writing, but who needed a little financial support.

"I have incredibly fond memories of university, particularly the Leeds music scene, which was incredibly vibrant during the 1960s and '70s. It's good keeping a link to the place, although I'm far too old these days to hang around the students' union."

Robinson's bolt hole in North Yorkshire is where he tries to go in between promotional tours and when he bought it four years ago it was the culmination of a long-held dream to have a permanent home back in this country.

"I always wanted to have a place in Yorkshire and to my great joy it's finally become possible," he says, his accent betraying the decades he's spent in Canada.

"I do travel a lot promoting the books and sometimes it's fun having dinner on your own, reading a book with a nice glass of wine, but the novelty does wear off and there's no better feeling than coming back to your own four walls."

While Robinson has picked up numerous crime-writing awards and a clutch of five-star reviews, like most crime writers he is aware of just how far down the pecking order the genre comes in the world of literary fiction.

"There's still an awful lot of snobbery about crime books," he says. "There are some who think they are somehow inferior, but it tends to be a view held only by people who have never read them.

"However, things are changing. Peter Temple recently became the first crime writer to win Australia's Miles Franklin award, but I fear the day when a detective novel wins the Man Booker is still a very long way off.

"Prizes are nice, but what really matters is the readers. Crime fans are notoriously loyal and I get many emails from people mostly desperate to know about Banks's love life or the places I've mentioned in Yorkshire.

"There is a small hard core who can't wait to tell you if you've got something wrong. I find it best to ignore them. I'm more than aware of my own faults."

Bad Boy, published by Hodder and Stoughton, priced 18.99, is out on August 5. To order a copy from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop, call free on 0800 0153232 or go online at www.yorkshirepostbookshop.co.uk. P&P is 2.75.

Peter Robinson will be signing copies of his new book at Waterstone's in Wakefield, today, at 12.30pm; York, on August 10, at 12.30pm, and Northallerton, on August 12, at 1pm. On August 10, he will also be talking about the latest Inspector Banks instalment, at Scarborough Library, at 7pm.