Peter Robinson

BIO

Peter Robinson's award-winning novels have been named a 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 magazine. Robinson was born and brought up in Yorkshire, England, but has lived in North America for nearly 25 years. He now divides his time between North America and the U.K.

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AUTHOR TALK

February 2005

In this interview Peter Robinson, author of the Inspector Banks series, discusses the inspiration for his protagonist, the role that music plays in his novels --- specifically as it relates to the title of his latest book, STRANGE AFFAIR --- and how he draws on his own experiences to convey to readers the effects that crimes have on their victims, as well as family, friends and communities.

Question: Stephen King has called the Inspector Banks series the "best series on the market." How do you feel about that kind of praise? Has it changed the way you view Banks or writing?

Peter Robinson: Obviously I'm gratified by praise from such a source as Stephen King. I have long been an admirer of his work and I was absolutely gobsmacked to read that he rated Banks so highly. Having said that, no, it hasn't changed the way I view Banks or writing in general. It's still hard work, and it's still exhilarating.

Q: How and when did you first conceive of Banks?

PR: In the early 1980s, I read a lot of British mysteries featuring a detective and sidekick operating in various parts of the UK, and I thought it would be a good idea to do the same in Yorkshire, where I come from. I didn't base Banks on any real person I knew, just my idea of what a slightly different sort of policeman might be like. In some ways he's closer to European models, such as Maigret, van der Valk and Martin Beck, than he is to British detectives of the time because I was reading mostly Simenon, Freeling and Sjowall and Wahloo.

Q: What makes Banks different from the other male mystery protagonists out there?

PR: He changes over the course of the series, becomes more introspective and melancholy. He is strongly affected by things that happen in his personal life and on the job. In that sense, he's more like a real person, an everyman, not a superhuman thinking machine or one-man vengeance society, and I often see the series as books just about a man and things that happen to him at home and at work.

Q: You've written 15 novels about Banks. By now, the character must have made his mark on your life. Do you think of him often as you go about your day? How so?

PR: Well, usually I'm working on a book, so he's on my mind a lot, yeah. But I like to think I can keep reality and fantasy apart. I know he's not real. Some of my readers don't, but I do. That said, when he talks, I listen!

Q: Though you were born and raised in England, you've lived your adult life in Canada. However, the Inspector Banks novels are set firmly on British soil. What is it about your childhood home that attracts you?

PR: Well, I think at first there might have been an element of nostalgia. I hadn't been away long when I started writing the Banks novels, so I still knew England far better than I knew Canada, which made Yorkshire a natural choice. I think I was feeling a bit homesick, too, so in a way writing about the place made me feel closer to it, at least in my imagination. I still have family and friends over there and go back frequently now.

Q: Banks is slightly bumbling when it comes to women. In STRANGE AFFAIR, he's forced to work alongside an ex-girlfriend. How does this emotional discomfort enrich the novel?

PR: He's not exactly bumbling, just not full of confidence, perhaps a bit shy. His relationship with Annie is tense and I think that tension adds to the book. It also has to result in blow ups at times, so you get a number of emotional outbursts that also enrich the narrative. Neither is quite sure of what it is that he or she has done to so alienate the other, though they both have their ideas, so a lot of the dialogue is treading on eggs wondering which will be the reference that will break all hell loose, and that adds an element of surprise.

Q: Your books contain countless references to musical work --- even commentary about the CDs your characters purchase and collect. What role does music play in your writing process and in character development in your latest installment of the Inspector Banks series, STRANGE AFFAIR? More specifically, in regard to the title of the book?

PR: Well, "Strange Affair" is the title of a song by Richard Thompson, a British singer-songwriter who used to be in the vanguard of the folk-rock movement in the late sixties/early seventies when he was guitarist and vocalist with Fairport Convention. His songs are contemporary but many are based on folk models, both musically and lyrically. "Strange Affair" is a melancholy song about death and lost youth and the ambiguity of dreams and it just seemed to suit the mood of the book. Also, it is sung in the opening scene by Penny Cartwright, a character from the second Banks novel, A DEDICATED MAN, and Banks spends a great deal of time pondering why she rejects him. On the other hand, there's perhaps less music in this book because Banks has lost his CD collection and hasn't quite got around to rebuilding it yet.

Q: You are noted for confronting gritty details and dark themes in your work, and STRANGE AFFAIR certainly has its share. Have you ever been shocked, or perhaps frightened, by the sinister truths you explore?

PR: Shocked in the daylight and frightened in the middle of the night. Depressed the rest of the time! Some of the research I did for STRANGE AFFAIR made my skin crawl. I can't go into details without spoiling one or more of the surprises in the plot, but there sometimes seems no end to the indignities that people force upon others in the pursuit of financial gain. Generally, at the end of the day, I'm able to put some distance between myself and my subject, but obviously some explorations into the dark side haunt me more than others, especially crimes involving children and young people.

Q: Many of the ideas for your book stem from real-life crimes. When you are reading the paper or listening to the news, what is it that grabs you about a particular news story and inspires you to write about it? The crimes committed in STRANGE AFFAIR couldn't possibly have happened, or have they?

PR: Inconclusiveness. I like newspaper stories that are incomplete, that give me room to imagine the rest. It's no good to me reading about something that's all neatly solved and wrapped up. That's why so many of my stories revolve around human psychology, around why someone commits a certain crime, or series of crimes. I don't profess to know the answers but I like to explore the possibilities. This was no different with STRANGE AFFAIR. I read an article in a newspaper that practically defied belief, then looked into it further. It suddenly disappeared from view, but the image stuck with me and I made my own story around it.

Q: Your books, of course, investigate the effects that crimes have on their victims. However, your writing also seems increasingly concerned with the broader effects on families, friends, and communities. How do you gauge those effects and capture them?

PR: I suppose I dig back into my own experience and then subject it to my imagination. I mean, Banks isn't me, but we share many of the same memories of the sixties. I grew up on an estate much like the one Banks lives on in the flashbacks in CLOSE TO HOME and revisits in STRANGE AFFAIR. These estates, at least back then, were rather like villages, worlds unto themselves, and something like the disappearance of a child would cast a very long shadow indeed. Also, because people lived so close to one another, there's every chance that someone would know something, and someone else would be keeping a secret. In STRANGE AFFAIR, though, I also wanted to take the idea of connectedness further, away from the village into a global context. It seems to me that we're now living in a world where a war in one country can have unexpected effects on another, and we are all to some extent at the mercy of the volatile areas such as the Balkans and the Middle East, or an act of terrorism such as 9/11. What happens in these places can have far-reaching effects on another country's society and culture, so I wanted to examine the effects of distant events on modern England.

Q: What do you like to do when you are not writing?

PR: I'm always writing, or thinking about it, but I love to watch movies and spend an hour or two in the pub with friends. I used to read a lot more, but after a day's writing, it's not my first choice of activity, so I get most of it done when I'm traveling, which I also enjoy. When we spend time in Yorkshire, I usually manage to get my year's ration of exercise walking miles every day in the Dales. The trouble is that being a writer comes to involve much more than writing if you are at all successful. That means you have to act as your own book-keeper, secretary and accountant, too, so it leaves less spare time than people might think. Also, I do a lot of reading for research or to come up with promotional quotes for other books, so my own reading choices just pile up.

Q: With 15 volumes of Inspector Banks now behind you, what's next for Banks? Anything you can give away?

PR: Next comes another very complex case involving the murder of a young woman at a festival in 1969 and the present day murder of a journalist in Yorkshire. There are two alternating narrative threads, with a Detective Inspector Stanley Chadwick investigating the 1969 murder and, of course Banks and Annie investigating the present day crime. Needless to say, the investigations come together in unusual and surprising ways. I hope. I've only done about 70 pages so far! The tentative title is PIECE OF MY HEART. And I mean that quite literally.

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