Peter Robinson, the prolific British Canadian crime novelist and creator of the popular Alan Banks series of books, has died, his publisher confirmed on Friday. Toronto-based Robinson died on October 4, 2022 after a short illness at the age of 72.
“Peter Robinson was an incredibly gifted writer and a delightful man, and we are all deeply saddened by his loss,” said Jared Bland, outgoing publisher of McClelland & Stewart, in a statement.
Born in England on March 17, 1950, Robinson earned a BA with honors in English literature from the University of Leeds. He emigrated to Canada in 1974 and continued his academic studies in Ontario, earning an MA in English and creative writing from the University of Windsor, tutored by American author Joyce Carol Oates, and then a Ph.D. in English from York University.
Robinson was best known for the long-running Inspector Banks crime fiction series, beginning with his first novel. View of the gallows in 1987, which earned Robinson his first Arthur Ellis Canada Crime Writers Award, an award he would win seven times for his novels and short stories.
Set in the fictional English town of Eastvale in the Yorkshire Dales, the Inspector Banks series of crime novels has been translated into 20 languages. Known as the “master of police procedures”, Robinson’s other books in the series include Many rivers to cross, careless love Y sleeping on the floor, which won the Arthur Ellis Award in 2018 in the category of best novel.
Outside of the Banks series, Robinson also wrote novels and short stories including The wrong hands and other stories. The Crime Writers of Canada awarded him the Derrick Murdock Award in 2010 for his “contribution to Canadian crime writing” and in 2020 the Grand Master Award “to recognize a Canadian writer with a substantial body of work that has garnered national and international recognition.” “
In a 2020 interview with the next chapter’Like Shelagh Rogers, Robinson noted that mystery writing has evolved with the times, and he adapted his writing and intrepid lead Alan Banks along with it.
Listen | Peter Robinson talks to Shelagh Rogers about the novel Many Rivers to Cross:
the next chapter14:48Peter Robinson on Many Rivers to Cross
Peter Robinson, who has been called “the master of police procedure” in his latest Inspector Banks mystery, Many Rivers to Cross.
“The world has changed a lot since the first book, gallows View, and that was published in 1987. People didn’t even have mobile phones, there was no DNA analysis, and computers were in their infancy,” Robinson said.
“Banks is now in his 60s. When he started, he was around 30, which is when I started publishing books. Now our ages are close, but not exactly the same. I guess I left some of my own life on him. No the circumstances: I’m married and I live in Toronto while he lives alone in a secluded cabin. He’s very introspective and becoming very monkish in his habits and I’m not like that at all.
“But certainly with age, a sense of mortality and introspection, Banks also becomes more philosophical. Those are all things that happen as the circumstances of your life change.”
To date, there are 27 books in the Inspector Banks series, with the last being in 2021. Not dark yet. The 28th novel in the series, titled standing in the shadowsis tentatively scheduled for a spring 2023 release. Between 2010 and 2016, several of the novels written by Robinson were adapted for British television and other original stories were produced, under the series title. DCI Banks.
“His novels, especially his long-running Inspector Banks series, are the kind of books that transcend their genre: they are crime novels, to be sure, but more than that, they are human novels, anchored by an immensely human character. Banks loves music, travel, food, poetry and his family – in these ways, he shared a lot with his creator,” Bland said.