Eight months after his death, British-born Canadian crime novelist Peter Robinson is set to be lauded in an online tribute featuring fellow authors Ian Rankin, Louise Penny, and Michael Connelly.
“The event,” reports Shotsmag Confidential, “will be available to view, free of charge, from Thursday 8th June, to mark the [UK] publication day of the twenty-eighth and final book in the [Detective Superintendent Alan] Banks series, Standing in the Shadows.” Moderating the presentation will be Alison Flood, who currently writes about thriller fiction for The Observer.
Information about watching this tribute, and perhaps submitting your questions or comments about Robinson’s life and work, is here.
Showing posts with label Peter Robinson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peter Robinson. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 10, 2023
Wednesday, April 12, 2023
One Last Case for Alan Banks
Shortly after British-born Canadian crime fictionist Peter Robinson passed away last October at age 72, his UK editor informed the press that the author, being the professional he was, hadn’t gone to his grave before first delivering his 28th Detective Superintendent Alan Banks novel—which she said was “perhaps his finest work yet.”
That mystery, titled Standing in the Shadows, is finally being released this week in the States by publisher William Morrow (and is set to reach bookshops in Great Britain on June 8). While I would dispute the appraisal of it being superior to such previous Banks outings as In a Dry Season (1999), Strange Affair (2005),
Piece of My Heart (2006), or Children of the Revolution (2013), the new novel—adroitly paced and woven with pop-cultural references and late-20th-century British history—certainly deserves top marks for a full-hearted exploration of its principal players, Banks included.
Robinson gives us two parallel story lines here, set in different time frames. The first begins with the strangulation death, in November 1980, of Alice Poole, a young, slender, and blonde student of social sciences and politics at what is presumably the University of Leeds, the author’s old alma mater in West Yorkshire (though I don’t recall him actually naming the institution in his text). She’d gone missing one evening after striding determinedly from her student bedsit, “carrying a small rucksack” and off to meet her older boyfriend, Mark Woodcroft. From there they were supposed to attend a weekend political demonstration in London. However, Alice’s body was soon after found in a nearby park. And Woodcroft was never heard from again.
Left behind to sort out these mysteries is one Nicholas Hartley, an English literature student from Portsmouth, who lived downstairs from Alice. He also happens to be her ex-boyfriend, and was none too keen on Woodcroft taking up with her. But Alice had evidently been disappointed in Hartley’s bloodless commitment to activist causes, be they opposition to war, sexual violence, or Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s conservative, anti-union policies, and she’d sought a more like-minded lover. Woodcroft better fit that bill, though Hartley distrusted him and thought him “a bit off.”
Local police detectives are quick to question Hartley, and they obviously regard him as a potential suspect in Alice’s slaying. They postulate, as well, that her death may be linked to a headline-grabbing recent series of attacks on young women—many of them around Leeds—that are blamed on an as-yet-unidentified killer: the Yorkshire Ripper. Did Hartley off pretty Alice, and could he be the Ripper? The latter seems unlikely, since Hartley was too young at the time of the Ripper’s first documented assault, in 1969, and the circumstances of Alice’s demise are at odds with that nebulous murderer’s modus operandi. Nonetheless, Hartley pursues information about Alice’s last days, hoping to clear his own name in this affair.
The second Standing in the Shadows time frame pushes us forward to November 2019 and a chilly archaeological dig at the edge of an old farm, located on the eastern outskirts of Eastvale, the fictional Yorkshire Dales market town (modeled on Richmond) where Robinson set his Banks tales. A new shopping center is planned for that property, but first a team of specialists has been sent to excavate the ground in quest of Roman artifacts. Instead of preserved pottery, bracelets, discarded spurs, and building foundations, though, they discover the skeleton of a man tucked into a shallow grave.
Called promptly to investigate are Superintendent Banks and his colleagues, notably Detective Constable Gerry Masterson and Detective Sergeant Winsome Jackman. Together with assorted forensics techs and the archaeologist who stumbled across those bones, Grace Hutchinson, they commence what appears to be the futile task of identifying the victim, a well-dressed male who may have lain underground for up to a decade. This leads them to septuagenarian Harold Gillespie, who’d owned the farm at
the time of the burial, but claims no knowledge of any corpse. Besides, he argues (not unreasonably), if he had murdered the man, why would he have been daft enough to secrete him on his own land?
(Left) The late Peter Robinson.
In his fiction, Robinson often explores the present-day ramifications of historical events. Here he does so in more dramatic detail than usual, toggling back and forth between Hartley’s decades-long campaign to learn of Alice Poole’s final activities and her killer’s identify (an effort that eventually leads him to become an investigative journalist), and Banks’ struggle to discern what provoked the fatal blow that ended his anonymous victim’s life. Along the way, we hear that Alice had been having some ill-defined “boyfriend problems,” and that the cops initially assigned to probe her murder had been taken off the case within a week’s time; learn that Gillespie is concealing elements of his résumé that might influence the direction of Banks’ inquiry; and are reminded of a scandal centered on the Metropolitan Police Service’s Special Demonstration Squad, a top-secret unit of undercover officers who infiltrated “radical left” groups, beginning in 1968, and struck up sexual relationships with women in order to enhance the credibility of their aliases.
Robinson was a deft plotter and a polished stylist, with an eye for the emotional resonance inherent in challenging turns of events. His portrayals of people could be subtle, occasionally frustratingly so, but they were always believable. Those strengths he brings to this latest novel. Plus, through Hartley, he playfully exhibits his bona fides as a littérateur, name-checking authors both eminent and obscure.
Although the bulk of character development in these pages focuses on Nicholas Hartley, who can never leave behind his feelings for poor, lost Alice, Robinson also builds satisfyingly on Banks’ back story. That subplot about the Special Demonstration Squad causes the superintendent to think back (remorsefully) on his own undercover undertakings in the mid-1970s, when he penetrated a drug operation in London’s Notting Hill district and failed to prevent the tragic overdose of a “timid but intelligent young woman” caught up peripherally in the operation. In addition, Banks must deal with an esoteric record collection left to him by his artist friend, Raymond Cabbot, who perished in the harrowing 27th Banks novel, Not Dark Yet. Ray was, of course, the father of Banks’ associate (and onetime inamorata), Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot, who is sadly absent from most of this tale. I can’t help wondering whether Robinson would have sidelined her, had he known when he started writing Standing in the Shadows that he wouldn’t have time to complete another book.
Inevitably, this yarn’s twin time frames intersect, and the pivotal puzzle of who killed Alice Poole is resolved. I just wish it hadn’t been—not completely, anyway. There’s plenty of intriguing clue dissection and crafty misdirection leading up to the last chapter, but the conclusion falls rather flat. I would’ve preferred that Robinson leave the solution a bit ambiguous. We didn’t need to know for sure whodunit; enough had already been revealed. Yes, such vagueness might have upset readers determined to see justice done by the close of every crime novel, but it would’ve been an unexpected and memorable capper to this consistently creative series.
And—a fortuitous result of his premature passing—Peter Robinson would now be quite safely immune from any criticism.
Robinson’s American publisher, William Morrow, has generously agreed to send copies of Standing in the Shadows to three lucky Rap Sheet readers. All you need do to enter this drawing is e-mail your name, postal address, and the titles of your favorite Banks books to jpwrites@wordcuts.org. Oh, and be sure to type “Peter Robinson Contest” in the subject line.
Entries will be accepted between now and midnight next Wednesday, April 19. The three winners will be chosen at random, and their names listed on this page the following day.
Sorry, but this contest is open only to U.S. residents.
What the heck are you waiting for? Send your entry in today!
That mystery, titled Standing in the Shadows, is finally being released this week in the States by publisher William Morrow (and is set to reach bookshops in Great Britain on June 8). While I would dispute the appraisal of it being superior to such previous Banks outings as In a Dry Season (1999), Strange Affair (2005),
Robinson gives us two parallel story lines here, set in different time frames. The first begins with the strangulation death, in November 1980, of Alice Poole, a young, slender, and blonde student of social sciences and politics at what is presumably the University of Leeds, the author’s old alma mater in West Yorkshire (though I don’t recall him actually naming the institution in his text). She’d gone missing one evening after striding determinedly from her student bedsit, “carrying a small rucksack” and off to meet her older boyfriend, Mark Woodcroft. From there they were supposed to attend a weekend political demonstration in London. However, Alice’s body was soon after found in a nearby park. And Woodcroft was never heard from again.
Left behind to sort out these mysteries is one Nicholas Hartley, an English literature student from Portsmouth, who lived downstairs from Alice. He also happens to be her ex-boyfriend, and was none too keen on Woodcroft taking up with her. But Alice had evidently been disappointed in Hartley’s bloodless commitment to activist causes, be they opposition to war, sexual violence, or Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s conservative, anti-union policies, and she’d sought a more like-minded lover. Woodcroft better fit that bill, though Hartley distrusted him and thought him “a bit off.”
Local police detectives are quick to question Hartley, and they obviously regard him as a potential suspect in Alice’s slaying. They postulate, as well, that her death may be linked to a headline-grabbing recent series of attacks on young women—many of them around Leeds—that are blamed on an as-yet-unidentified killer: the Yorkshire Ripper. Did Hartley off pretty Alice, and could he be the Ripper? The latter seems unlikely, since Hartley was too young at the time of the Ripper’s first documented assault, in 1969, and the circumstances of Alice’s demise are at odds with that nebulous murderer’s modus operandi. Nonetheless, Hartley pursues information about Alice’s last days, hoping to clear his own name in this affair.
The second Standing in the Shadows time frame pushes us forward to November 2019 and a chilly archaeological dig at the edge of an old farm, located on the eastern outskirts of Eastvale, the fictional Yorkshire Dales market town (modeled on Richmond) where Robinson set his Banks tales. A new shopping center is planned for that property, but first a team of specialists has been sent to excavate the ground in quest of Roman artifacts. Instead of preserved pottery, bracelets, discarded spurs, and building foundations, though, they discover the skeleton of a man tucked into a shallow grave.
Called promptly to investigate are Superintendent Banks and his colleagues, notably Detective Constable Gerry Masterson and Detective Sergeant Winsome Jackman. Together with assorted forensics techs and the archaeologist who stumbled across those bones, Grace Hutchinson, they commence what appears to be the futile task of identifying the victim, a well-dressed male who may have lain underground for up to a decade. This leads them to septuagenarian Harold Gillespie, who’d owned the farm at
(Left) The late Peter Robinson.
In his fiction, Robinson often explores the present-day ramifications of historical events. Here he does so in more dramatic detail than usual, toggling back and forth between Hartley’s decades-long campaign to learn of Alice Poole’s final activities and her killer’s identify (an effort that eventually leads him to become an investigative journalist), and Banks’ struggle to discern what provoked the fatal blow that ended his anonymous victim’s life. Along the way, we hear that Alice had been having some ill-defined “boyfriend problems,” and that the cops initially assigned to probe her murder had been taken off the case within a week’s time; learn that Gillespie is concealing elements of his résumé that might influence the direction of Banks’ inquiry; and are reminded of a scandal centered on the Metropolitan Police Service’s Special Demonstration Squad, a top-secret unit of undercover officers who infiltrated “radical left” groups, beginning in 1968, and struck up sexual relationships with women in order to enhance the credibility of their aliases.
Robinson was a deft plotter and a polished stylist, with an eye for the emotional resonance inherent in challenging turns of events. His portrayals of people could be subtle, occasionally frustratingly so, but they were always believable. Those strengths he brings to this latest novel. Plus, through Hartley, he playfully exhibits his bona fides as a littérateur, name-checking authors both eminent and obscure.
Although the bulk of character development in these pages focuses on Nicholas Hartley, who can never leave behind his feelings for poor, lost Alice, Robinson also builds satisfyingly on Banks’ back story. That subplot about the Special Demonstration Squad causes the superintendent to think back (remorsefully) on his own undercover undertakings in the mid-1970s, when he penetrated a drug operation in London’s Notting Hill district and failed to prevent the tragic overdose of a “timid but intelligent young woman” caught up peripherally in the operation. In addition, Banks must deal with an esoteric record collection left to him by his artist friend, Raymond Cabbot, who perished in the harrowing 27th Banks novel, Not Dark Yet. Ray was, of course, the father of Banks’ associate (and onetime inamorata), Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot, who is sadly absent from most of this tale. I can’t help wondering whether Robinson would have sidelined her, had he known when he started writing Standing in the Shadows that he wouldn’t have time to complete another book.
Inevitably, this yarn’s twin time frames intersect, and the pivotal puzzle of who killed Alice Poole is resolved. I just wish it hadn’t been—not completely, anyway. There’s plenty of intriguing clue dissection and crafty misdirection leading up to the last chapter, but the conclusion falls rather flat. I would’ve preferred that Robinson leave the solution a bit ambiguous. We didn’t need to know for sure whodunit; enough had already been revealed. Yes, such vagueness might have upset readers determined to see justice done by the close of every crime novel, but it would’ve been an unexpected and memorable capper to this consistently creative series.
And—a fortuitous result of his premature passing—Peter Robinson would now be quite safely immune from any criticism.
* * *
My slight fault-finding aside, Standing in the Shadows is a work every Alan Banks fan will wish to own. Here’s how to get yours.Robinson’s American publisher, William Morrow, has generously agreed to send copies of Standing in the Shadows to three lucky Rap Sheet readers. All you need do to enter this drawing is e-mail your name, postal address, and the titles of your favorite Banks books to jpwrites@wordcuts.org. Oh, and be sure to type “Peter Robinson Contest” in the subject line.
Entries will be accepted between now and midnight next Wednesday, April 19. The three winners will be chosen at random, and their names listed on this page the following day.
Sorry, but this contest is open only to U.S. residents.
What the heck are you waiting for? Send your entry in today!
Sunday, February 19, 2023
Bullet Points: Random Finds Edition
• It seems that British comedy writer John Finnemore (Cabin Pressure), one of the few people known to have solved the literary puzzle Cain’s Jawbone, has penned “an official sequel” to that work. As The Guardian’s Sarah Shaffi explains, the Cain’s Jawbone murder mystery was originally published in 1934, and was created by Edward Powys Mathers (aka “Torquemada”), the “cryptic crossword compiler” for Britain’s Observer newspaper. 
Mathers’ puzzle “can only be solved if readers rearrange its 100 pages in the correct order,” says Shaffi. “It became a literary phenomenon after book fans on TikTok discovered it.” About the contents of Finnemore’s sequel—set for release next year—The Guardian provides the following:
• Crime Fiction Lover reports that the popular ITV-TV crime drama Unforgotten will return to British airwaves on Monday, February 27. This fifth season of the show finds Irish actress Sinéad Keenan stepping into shoes vacated by Nicola Walker, whose character, Detective Chief Inspector Cassie Stuart, was killed suddenly in a car crash at the end of Series 4. (Walker subsequently went on to headline the Alibi network’s Annika, which has been renewed for a second season.) Keenan has been cast as DCI Jessica James, who joins series regular DCI Sunil “Sunny” Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) in managing a team of London police detectives who specialize in solving cold cases. Their initial investigation together will, of course, be a “devilishly tricky one,” CFL explains. “During the renovation of a period property in [the West London district of] Hammersmith, a body is found bricked into the chimney. At first, Jessica is sceptical and warns that with its tight resources the team can only afford to investigate cases that have consequences in the here-and-now. After all, there’s the suggestion that the body could date as far back as the 1930s.” As usual, Season 5 will comprise six episodes. The UK blog What to Watch notes that “A U.S. release date has still to be announced.”
• Meanwhile, the ninth and concluding season of Endeavour—a prequel to the long-running Inspector Morse—is scheduled to begin its run on the same British network, ITV, come Sunday, February 26. There will be just three 90-minute episodes this time out, concluding on March 12. Although The Killing Times says Season 9 “plot details are currently embargoed,” Radio Times observes that the program’s “fans are bracing themselves for some sad scenes in the final three episodes, which will reveal how Morse (Shaun Evans) came to be estranged from his crime-solving partner, Fred Thursday (Roger Allam).” The PBS-TV Web site supplies nary a clue as to when this last season of Endeavour might become available to American viewers, but it does offer a brief video that recaps scenes from Evans’ decade spent in the role of Detective Sergeant Endeavour Morse.
• Speaking of Shaun Evans, it appears he will star with Anna Maxwell Martin (Line of Duty) in a four-part ITV adaptation of Delia Balmer’s 2017 true-crime memoir, Living with a Serial Killer. The story, according to Deadline, will focus on Balmer, a nurse “who fell for murderer John Sweeney (Evans) and overcame a horrific attack to provide vital evidence in the prosecution against her former lover.” Using a script by Nick Stevens (The Pembrokeshire Murders), filming on this mini-series is expected to begin next month.
• Season 2 of the HBO-TV series Perry Mason, starring Matthew Rhys, is slated to premiere on Monday, March 6. I haven’t seen much information about what to expect from those eight new episodes, but the Web site FedRegsAdvisor states they’ll be set in 1933—the last year of America’s failed Prohibition experiment—“with the protagonist’s law company taking on civil issues as opposed to criminal justice cases.” After the offspring of a powerful oil company exec is slain cruelly, and Los Angeles’ Depression-era “Hoovervilles” are searched for “the most obvious suspects, … Perry, Della [Street], and Paul [Drake] find themselves at the center of a case that reveals vast conspiracies and forces them to consider what it means to be truly guilty.” A most promising trailer for Season 2 is available here.
• A final TV note: The UK channel BBC One has released early images from Wolf, an upcoming crime drama based on the late author Mo Hayder’s novels about Detective Inspector Jack Caffery. English actor Ukweli Roach will be portraying Caffery.
• Because I have committed myself to attending this year’s Bouchercon, I’ve been on alert for news about that event. Which is why I noticed this generous offer. From In Reference to Murder: “A new Bouchercon Scholarship Award Program has been established to help mystery fans and writers with a financial subsidy. This subsidy covers registration fees for the annual Bouchercon convention, scheduled to be held in San Diego in 2023, as well as travel and lodging costs, reimbursed up to $500.00 (for up to five awardees). Interested applicants will need to write a 300- to 500-word essay on the applicant’s interest in attending Bouchercon and in the mystery genre and be willing to volunteer for no less than four hours at the event. The deadline is May 1st, with scholarship winners announced June 1.” Click here to find applications specifics.
• Nero Wolfe fans will find something extra to like about this San Diego Bouchercon. A banquet in honor of their favorite fictional sleuth has been scheduled for Friday, September 1, at Morton’s Steakhouse on J Street, “a 2-minute walk from the convention hotel, with shuttle rides available.” The cost is $175 per person, and it looks as if attendance is limited to members of the Wolfe Pack literary society.
• Max Allan Collins and James L. Traylor have been scoring plenty of favorable press coverage for their new, first-ever Mickey Spillane biography, Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction (Mysterious Press). That includes a joint interview with the Web site Bookreporter, from which we learn, for instance, why Spillane took a decade-long hiatus from writing after Kiss Me, Deadly was published in 1952.
My humble contribution to these kudos is a short critique I posted earlier this week in January Magazine. Here it is in its entirety:
• Dammit! As I mentioned here last month, I have been looking forward to watching Marlowe, an adaptation of Benjamin Black’s 2014 Philip Marlowe continuation novel, The Black-Eyed Blonde, which debuted in theaters last week. Unfortunately, The A.V. Club’s Ray Greene is rather less than enthusiastic about this Liam Neeson film. As he remarks in a review, “Marlowe has seen it all—he’s a voyeur of the very worst human behaviors, and he’s world-weary to a fault. Liam is just plain weary—laconic, not iconic. Where Bogie and even a comparably aged Robert Mitchum were able to convey Marlowe as a man who at least remembers what caring felt like, Neeson is going through the motions of going through the motions. And the age thing doesn’t help. The only time Neeson’s Marlowe seems truly vulnerable is when he talks about the possibility of regaining his police pension. ‘I’m getting too old for this’ he moans after a fistfight, tempting audience agreement with the very phrase.” I’ll still plump for tickets to Marlowe, but go into it with lowered expectations.
• Thanks to the release of Poker Face on the Peacock streaming service, a 10-part “howcatchem” crime/comedy series that has garnered plenty of comparisons to Columbo, Peter Falk’s iconic L.A. police lieutenant has been enjoying a recent wave of reconsideration in critical circles. In this piece for the Web site of Boston’s WBUR-FM radio, Ed Siegel recalls an interview he had over dinner with Falk in the mid-’80s. In the meantime, Slate’s Cameron Gorman explains how the Internet turned Columbo “into a sex symbol and queer icon.”
• I am dearly hoping that this celebration of crime novelist Peter Robinson’s life and literary endeavors, to be held at England’s University of Leeds in early April, will be broadcast live via the Web. Robinson, you’ll recall, died last October at age 72.
• Tomorrow is Presidents’ Day here in the States—time to pour through Janet Rudolph’s extensive collection of mysteries that guest star or are built around American chief executives. You might also wish to revisit this article I wrote for CrimeReads about novels featuring authentic or imagined U.S. presidents.
• Subjects covered in Mike Ripley’s latest “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots range from his long-ago stroke to the 1951 espionage film Decision Before Dawn and Steven Powell’s biography of James Ellroy, plus mentions of brand-new works by Stephen O’Shea, Kathleen Kent, David Brierley, Karen Smirnoff, and others.
• Worth checking out as well is the new, Winter 2013 issue of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, which is stuffed full of “best crime fiction” choices from the year that just was—selected both by DP critics and outside sources. Among this edition’s other contents are a wrap-up of Depression-era mysteries; reviews columns from such regulars as Ted Hertel, Meredith Anthony, and Kristopher Zgorski; and news that DP has added four contributors to its stable, all refugees from the recently closed Mystery Scene magazine: Kevin Burton Smith, Robin Agnew, Hank Wagner, and Craig Sisterson. Subscribe to this quarterly, or buy the Winter 2013 issue alone, by clicking here.
• And isn’t this interesting. Ramona Emerson’s 2022 crime/horror thriller, Shutter (Soho Crime), has moved up to the shortlist of titles vying for this year’s PEN America Literary Awards. It’s been nominated for both the PEN Open Book Award and the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel. Winners are to be announced on March 2 during an evening ceremony at The Town Hall in New York City.
A locked room mystery, Finnemore’s new whodunnit hinges on a person found stabbed to death in the study of a complete stranger. The room was securely locked from the inside, but no weapon—or murderer—has ever been found, and the police investigation discovered no credible suspects or likely motive.For now, Finnemore’s book, due out from crowdfunding publisher Unbound, is listed only as Untitled Mystery. However, Shaffi reports that “the title will be revealed to those who pledge during the crowdfunding campaign.” As of this writing, that campaign has 1,061 supporters at various reward levels.
The murderer keeps, safely locked in a drawer, a box of 100 picture postcards. If arranged in the correct order and properly understood, these postcards will explain the murder in the study, and nine others that took place the same year. Readers need to re-order the postcards, one side of which features text, the other an image which is also a clue, in sequence to correctly solve and explain the 10 murders.
• Crime Fiction Lover reports that the popular ITV-TV crime drama Unforgotten will return to British airwaves on Monday, February 27. This fifth season of the show finds Irish actress Sinéad Keenan stepping into shoes vacated by Nicola Walker, whose character, Detective Chief Inspector Cassie Stuart, was killed suddenly in a car crash at the end of Series 4. (Walker subsequently went on to headline the Alibi network’s Annika, which has been renewed for a second season.) Keenan has been cast as DCI Jessica James, who joins series regular DCI Sunil “Sunny” Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) in managing a team of London police detectives who specialize in solving cold cases. Their initial investigation together will, of course, be a “devilishly tricky one,” CFL explains. “During the renovation of a period property in [the West London district of] Hammersmith, a body is found bricked into the chimney. At first, Jessica is sceptical and warns that with its tight resources the team can only afford to investigate cases that have consequences in the here-and-now. After all, there’s the suggestion that the body could date as far back as the 1930s.” As usual, Season 5 will comprise six episodes. The UK blog What to Watch notes that “A U.S. release date has still to be announced.”
• Meanwhile, the ninth and concluding season of Endeavour—a prequel to the long-running Inspector Morse—is scheduled to begin its run on the same British network, ITV, come Sunday, February 26. There will be just three 90-minute episodes this time out, concluding on March 12. Although The Killing Times says Season 9 “plot details are currently embargoed,” Radio Times observes that the program’s “fans are bracing themselves for some sad scenes in the final three episodes, which will reveal how Morse (Shaun Evans) came to be estranged from his crime-solving partner, Fred Thursday (Roger Allam).” The PBS-TV Web site supplies nary a clue as to when this last season of Endeavour might become available to American viewers, but it does offer a brief video that recaps scenes from Evans’ decade spent in the role of Detective Sergeant Endeavour Morse.
• Speaking of Shaun Evans, it appears he will star with Anna Maxwell Martin (Line of Duty) in a four-part ITV adaptation of Delia Balmer’s 2017 true-crime memoir, Living with a Serial Killer. The story, according to Deadline, will focus on Balmer, a nurse “who fell for murderer John Sweeney (Evans) and overcame a horrific attack to provide vital evidence in the prosecution against her former lover.” Using a script by Nick Stevens (The Pembrokeshire Murders), filming on this mini-series is expected to begin next month.
• Season 2 of the HBO-TV series Perry Mason, starring Matthew Rhys, is slated to premiere on Monday, March 6. I haven’t seen much information about what to expect from those eight new episodes, but the Web site FedRegsAdvisor states they’ll be set in 1933—the last year of America’s failed Prohibition experiment—“with the protagonist’s law company taking on civil issues as opposed to criminal justice cases.” After the offspring of a powerful oil company exec is slain cruelly, and Los Angeles’ Depression-era “Hoovervilles” are searched for “the most obvious suspects, … Perry, Della [Street], and Paul [Drake] find themselves at the center of a case that reveals vast conspiracies and forces them to consider what it means to be truly guilty.” A most promising trailer for Season 2 is available here.
• A final TV note: The UK channel BBC One has released early images from Wolf, an upcoming crime drama based on the late author Mo Hayder’s novels about Detective Inspector Jack Caffery. English actor Ukweli Roach will be portraying Caffery.
• Because I have committed myself to attending this year’s Bouchercon, I’ve been on alert for news about that event. Which is why I noticed this generous offer. From In Reference to Murder: “A new Bouchercon Scholarship Award Program has been established to help mystery fans and writers with a financial subsidy. This subsidy covers registration fees for the annual Bouchercon convention, scheduled to be held in San Diego in 2023, as well as travel and lodging costs, reimbursed up to $500.00 (for up to five awardees). Interested applicants will need to write a 300- to 500-word essay on the applicant’s interest in attending Bouchercon and in the mystery genre and be willing to volunteer for no less than four hours at the event. The deadline is May 1st, with scholarship winners announced June 1.” Click here to find applications specifics.
• Nero Wolfe fans will find something extra to like about this San Diego Bouchercon. A banquet in honor of their favorite fictional sleuth has been scheduled for Friday, September 1, at Morton’s Steakhouse on J Street, “a 2-minute walk from the convention hotel, with shuttle rides available.” The cost is $175 per person, and it looks as if attendance is limited to members of the Wolfe Pack literary society.
• Max Allan Collins and James L. Traylor have been scoring plenty of favorable press coverage for their new, first-ever Mickey Spillane biography, Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction (Mysterious Press). That includes a joint interview with the Web site Bookreporter, from which we learn, for instance, why Spillane took a decade-long hiatus from writing after Kiss Me, Deadly was published in 1952.
“The chewing gum of American literature” is how crime novelist Mickey Spillane described his books, which typically blended eye-for-an-eye justice with risqué innuendos and granite-chinned philosophizing (“Too many times naked women and death walked side by side”). And boy, did readers eat up his fiction, making his first Mike Hammer private-eye yarn, 1947’s I, the Jury, into a best-seller that spawned a dozen sequels and turned its protagonist into a radio, film, and TV fixture. Spillane developed his own media persona along the way, part-Hammer (he portrayed his Gotham gumshoe in a 1963 film, The Girl Hunters) and part-ham (he spoofed himself in a succession of Miller Lite beer commercials). In this enlightening biography, fellow writers Collins (his friend and posthumous collaborator) and Traylor make the most of their extraordinary access to Spillane’s personal archives, delivering incisive perspectives on his comic-book years, his multiple marriages, his pugnaciousness and wont to embellish the facts of his life, his surprising conversion by Jehovah’s Witnesses, his vexation with Hollywood, and his eventual recognition by peers who’d earlier condemned him as “a vulgar pulpmeister.” This book’s paramount success, though, is in casting Spillane as a trendsetting stylist, who recognized early the value of paperback publication and helped shape late-20th-century detective fiction.• Until recently, I knew Mark Dawidziak mainly as the author of a fine 1989 TV retrospective, The Columbo Phile: A Casebook. But he is the man, too, behind a new biography that features prominently on my must-have list: A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe (St. Martin’s Press). In a CrimeReads extract from that book, Dawidziak recounts the “ongoing fascination” with Poe’s death, in Baltimore, at the tender age of 40—a subject that A Mystery of Mysteries addresses in some detail. Also posted recently in CrimeReads was Dean Jobb’s terrific look back at Poe’s 1843 horror story, “The Black Cat,” and the real-life murder that inspired it.
• Dammit! As I mentioned here last month, I have been looking forward to watching Marlowe, an adaptation of Benjamin Black’s 2014 Philip Marlowe continuation novel, The Black-Eyed Blonde, which debuted in theaters last week. Unfortunately, The A.V. Club’s Ray Greene is rather less than enthusiastic about this Liam Neeson film. As he remarks in a review, “Marlowe has seen it all—he’s a voyeur of the very worst human behaviors, and he’s world-weary to a fault. Liam is just plain weary—laconic, not iconic. Where Bogie and even a comparably aged Robert Mitchum were able to convey Marlowe as a man who at least remembers what caring felt like, Neeson is going through the motions of going through the motions. And the age thing doesn’t help. The only time Neeson’s Marlowe seems truly vulnerable is when he talks about the possibility of regaining his police pension. ‘I’m getting too old for this’ he moans after a fistfight, tempting audience agreement with the very phrase.” I’ll still plump for tickets to Marlowe, but go into it with lowered expectations.
• Thanks to the release of Poker Face on the Peacock streaming service, a 10-part “howcatchem” crime/comedy series that has garnered plenty of comparisons to Columbo, Peter Falk’s iconic L.A. police lieutenant has been enjoying a recent wave of reconsideration in critical circles. In this piece for the Web site of Boston’s WBUR-FM radio, Ed Siegel recalls an interview he had over dinner with Falk in the mid-’80s. In the meantime, Slate’s Cameron Gorman explains how the Internet turned Columbo “into a sex symbol and queer icon.”
• I am dearly hoping that this celebration of crime novelist Peter Robinson’s life and literary endeavors, to be held at England’s University of Leeds in early April, will be broadcast live via the Web. Robinson, you’ll recall, died last October at age 72.
• Tomorrow is Presidents’ Day here in the States—time to pour through Janet Rudolph’s extensive collection of mysteries that guest star or are built around American chief executives. You might also wish to revisit this article I wrote for CrimeReads about novels featuring authentic or imagined U.S. presidents.
• Subjects covered in Mike Ripley’s latest “Getting Away with Murder” column for Shots range from his long-ago stroke to the 1951 espionage film Decision Before Dawn and Steven Powell’s biography of James Ellroy, plus mentions of brand-new works by Stephen O’Shea, Kathleen Kent, David Brierley, Karen Smirnoff, and others.
• Worth checking out as well is the new, Winter 2013 issue of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, which is stuffed full of “best crime fiction” choices from the year that just was—selected both by DP critics and outside sources. Among this edition’s other contents are a wrap-up of Depression-era mysteries; reviews columns from such regulars as Ted Hertel, Meredith Anthony, and Kristopher Zgorski; and news that DP has added four contributors to its stable, all refugees from the recently closed Mystery Scene magazine: Kevin Burton Smith, Robin Agnew, Hank Wagner, and Craig Sisterson. Subscribe to this quarterly, or buy the Winter 2013 issue alone, by clicking here.
• And isn’t this interesting. Ramona Emerson’s 2022 crime/horror thriller, Shutter (Soho Crime), has moved up to the shortlist of titles vying for this year’s PEN America Literary Awards. It’s been nominated for both the PEN Open Book Award and the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel. Winners are to be announced on March 2 during an evening ceremony at The Town Hall in New York City.
Saturday, October 08, 2022
Peter Robinson Signs Off
The first time I met Peter Robinson was across a table at a quiet, modern café in Vancouver, British Columbia’s hip Kitsilano neighborhood. It was the summer of 1999, and I had ventured north from Seattle for the explicit purpose of talking to that 49-year-old, British-born author whose latest police procedural, In a Dry Season—his 10th in a dozen years to feature Yorkshire-area Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks—had been winning plaudits from critics on both sides of the Atlantic. (It would go on, in 2000, to capture both an Anthony Award and a Barry Award for Best Novel.)
I couldn’t help but recall that long-ago meeting as I read the news of Robinson’s sudden demise on October 4, following what’s been described as “a brief illness.” He was only 72 years old.
Robinson wore a dark blue sports jacket, a white shirt, beige slacks, and a face congenitally prone toward smiling. After years of doing publicity tours on behalf of his books, he seemed entirely comfortable talking about himself and his literary endeavors with an American journalist more than slightly awed by his interviewee’s success. At the time, I had only just read In a Dry Season. I knew some basic facts of Robinson’s life—that he’d been born in 1950 in the Armley district of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England; that he’d graduated with a B.A. Honours Degree in English Literature from the University of Leeds, before relocating to Canada in 1974 and earning a Master’s degree in English and Creative Writing from Ontario’s University of Windsor (no less than Joyce Carol Oates had served as his tutor!); that he had gone on to achieve a Ph.D. in English at York University in Toronto; and that he’d introduced Banks in his first published novel, 1987’s Gallows View. I knew, too, that his fifth Banks book, Past Reason Hated (1991), had won the Crime Writers of Canada’s prestigious Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel. But I could claim only scant knowledge of his initial nine Banks yarns, and probably as a result of nervousness, I kept referring to his wife, Sheila Halladay, as “Sandra,” that being the name of Alan Banks’ estranged spouse.
In the end, it may only have been my sincere enthusiasm for his new novel that prevented Robinson from questioning my authority to conduct this lengthy interview. I subsequently wrote about it in January Magazine, recounting the plot of In a Dry Season as follows:
The drama kicks off with the discovery of a skeleton, hidden since World War II in a reservoir-flooded hamlet called Hobb’s End, but recently exposed by a drought. Since the bones appear to be those of a murdered woman, the police in nearby Eastvale are alerted, and out comes Detective Chief Inspector Banks to investigate. He expects this to be a “dirty, pointless, dead-end case,” and sees his assignment to it as just another means by which his vindictive boss, Chief Constable Jeremiah (“Jimmy”) Riddle, can punish him for previous insubordination. However, as Banks and a local detective sergeant, Annie Cabbot, re-create the crime scene, bringing Hobb’s End figuratively back to life through the memories of its ex-inhabitants, they come to realize the obvious hardships—and hidden passions—of wartime Yorkshire. They’re also drawn by the storyFor about a decade and a half after making Peter Robinson’s acquaintance, I stayed in infrequent touch with him. We’d get together for lunch whenever his book-promotion duties brought him to Seattle, to talk about fiction writing and music (another of his major passions), and to catch up one each other’s lives. (His U.S. publisher, William Morrow, kindly picked up the tab.) I would search him out at Bouchercons, if I knew he and I were both in attendance. And I took the opportunity—via e-mail—to interview him again, in 2013 (this time for Kirkus Reviews), after his 20th Banks novel, Watching the Dark, reached print. I also kept up with his growing series, and went back to sample his earliest Banks titles.of their murder victim, Gloria Shackleton, a curvaceous and somewhat brazen young woman who’d ventured into the country to help with the farming, but wound up marrying a young soldier who was later reported killed in Southeast Asia.
Throughout this tale, author Robinson weaves the text of a memoir, written by septuagenarian detective novelist Vivian Elmsley, that sheds additional light on life in Hobb’s End. Its mixing of viewpoints and mounting suspense makes In a Dry Season a most absorbing and satisfying read.
Those later years were good to Robinson. His series inspired a 2010-2016 ITV crime drama, DCI Banks, starring Stephen Tompkinson (who the author confessed “certainly didn’t match my idea of what Banks looks like”), with Andrea Lowe filling the shoes of Annie Cabbot (even though she certainly didn’t match my idea of what Banks’ colleague and onetime romantic interest looked like). He continued to produce fresh Banks outings, with some time left over to pen short stories and the occasional standalone novel. Writing prizes and nominations flowed his way. His suspenseful one-off, Before the Poison (2012), picked up both an Arthur Ellis Award and a Martin Beck Award, and his Banks book Sleeping in the Ground scored the Ellis for Best Crime Novel of 2018. Finally, in 2020, he was presented with the Crime Writers of Canada’s Grand Master Award, which likely made that British émigré glad to have long-ago crossed the pond.
The Bookseller reports that Robinson “sold nearly 3.7 million” books in the UK alone, with his 17th DCI Banks installment, Friend of the Devil (2008), being the “all-time bestseller at almost 167,000 copies.”
Through it all, at least in my experience, he remained a kind, thoughtful, generous, and often dryly humorous gent, an exceptional storyteller (especially with beer in hand), much devoted to his art and absent the arrogance and boastfulness that might have clung to a writer of such accomplishments. His editor at the UK publishing house Hodder & Stoughton, Carolyn Mays, told the BBC: “Much that he did was done without fanfare, like the scholarship he created at the University of Leeds, where he himself took his first degree, to sponsor students through an English literature and creative writing course.” Robinson never forget that he’d been, in his own way, lucky.
The late Toronto author’s 28th Alan Banks novel, Standing in the Shadows, is due out in the States next April. I’ll not miss picking up a copy. I own almost the entirety of his oeuvre, including two versions—one American, the other Canadian—of what is today celebrated as his “breakout book,” In a Dry Season. I don’t often ask authors to sign their works for me, but I did request that Peter Robinson ink my Canadian copy of In a Dry Season 23 years ago. His inscription reads:
To Jeff — A pleasure talking to you in Vancouver.In fact, the pleasure was all mine. And now, so are the memories.
Cheers! Peter Robinson
READ MORE: “In Memoriam—Peter Robinson,” by Ayo Onatade (Shotsmag Confidential); “Peter Robinson, R.I.P.,” by Martin Edwards (‘Do You Write Under Your Own Name?); “Peter Robinson Obituary,” by Peter Guttridge (The Guardian); “Peter Robinson, Remembered,” by Peter Handel (CrimeReads).
Friday, May 22, 2020
Canadian Crime Makes a Splash
I’m still hunkered down in my office, working to finish a longish piece for another publication. But I want to make sure everyone knows which books and authors have won the 2020 Arthur Ellis Awards. The announcement was made last night by the Crime Writers of Canada.
Best Crime Novel:
Greenwood, by Michael Christie (McClelland & Stewart)
Also nominated: Fate, by Ian Hamilton (House of Anansi Press); Hideaway, by Nicole Lundrigan (Penguin Random House Canada); The Last Resort, by Marissa Stapley (Simon & Schuster Canada); and In the Dark, by Loreth Anne White (Montlake Romance)
The Angela Harrison Memorial Award for Best Crime First Novel: Nobody Move, by Philip Elliott (Into the Void Press)
Also nominated: Blindshot, by Denis Coupal (Linda Leith); and Past Presence, by Nicole Bross (Literary Wanderlust)
Best Crime Novella: The Red Chesterfield, by Wayne Arthurson (University of Calgary Press)
Also nominated: Blood Ties, by Barbara Fradkin (Orca); Too Close to Home, by Brenda Chapman (Grass Roots Press); The Goddaughter Does Vegas, by Melodie Campbell (Orca); and The Woman in Apartment 615, by Devon Shepherd (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, January/February 2019)
Best Crime Short Story: “Closing Doors,” by Peter Sellers (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, March/April 2019)
Also nominated: “In Plain Sight,” by Y.S. Lee (from Life is Short and Then You Die, edited by Kelley Armstrong; Macmillan); and “The Dead Man's Dog,” by Zandra Renwick (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, January/February 2019)
Best French Crime Book:
Tempêtes, by Andrée Michaud (Éditions Québec Amériques)
Also nominated: Les offrandes, by Louis Carmain (VLB Éditeur); Ghetto X, by Martin Michaud (Libre Expression); Le tribunal de la rue Quirion, by Guillaume Morrissette (Guy Saint-Jean Éditeur); and Le cercle de cendres, by Félix Ravenelle-Arcouette (Héliotrope)
Best Juvenile or Young Adult Crime Book:
Keep This to Yourself, by Tom Ryan (Albert Whitman)
Also nominated: Tank & Fizz: The Case of the Tentacle Terror, by Liam O’Donnell and Mike Dean, Orca); The Grey Sisters, by Jo Treggiari (Penguin Teen); and Ghosts, by David A. Robertson (HighWater Press)
Best Non-fiction Crime Book:
Murdered Midas: A Millionaire, His Gold Mine, and a Strange Death on an Island Paradise, by Charlotte Gray (HarperCollins)
Also nominated: The Missing Millionaire: The True Story of Ambrose Small and the City Obsessed with Finding Him, by Katie Daubs (McClelland & Stewart); The Billionaire Murders, by Kevin Donovan (Penguin Random House); The Court of Better Fiction, by Debra Komar (Dundurn Press); and The Forest City Killer: A Serial Murderer, a Cold-Case Sleuth, and a Search for Justice, by Vanessa Brown (ECW Press)
The Unhanged Arthur Award for Best Unpublished Crime Manuscript: The Dieppe Letters, by Liz Rachel Walker
Also nominated: Bert Mintenko and the Serious Business, by B.L. Smith; Henry’s Bomb, by K.P. Bartlett; One Bad Day After Another, by Max Folsom; and The River Cage, by Pam Barnsley
Grand Master Award: Peter Robinson
(Hat tip to Mystery Fanfare.)
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Regarding Harry
You knew it was only a matter of time before something like this happened, right? As Omnimystery News explains:
In the UK, DCI Banks started showing in 2010, but here in the States, series I and II didn’t debut until this last January, running back to back. Series III is being prepared for broadcast in the UK next year, but there’s no news yet on when it might reach these shores.
Amazon Studios has ordered a pilot based on a character created by crime novelist Michael Connelly. Titled Bosch, it will be centered on LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch, first introduced in the 1992 novel The Black Echo, which won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel the following year.A hearty congratulations is due Michael Connelly. I’m only surprised it has taken this long to fashion a TV series from his very popular Hieronymous “Harry” Bosch books.
Deadline reports that Connelly co-wrote the pilot screenplay, though it isn’t clear if it is an original story or based on one of the novels in the series.
* * *
Speaking of small-screen endeavors, the British TV series DCI Banks, starring
Stephen Tompkinson as author Peter Robinson’s longtime Yorkshire cop, Alan Banks, has been renewed for a third series (aka season). Production on a trio of two-part episodes is scheduled, beginning in August of this year. Those episodes will be based on the novels Wednesday’s Child, Piece of My Heart, and Bad Boy.In the UK, DCI Banks started showing in 2010, but here in the States, series I and II didn’t debut until this last January, running back to back. Series III is being prepared for broadcast in the UK next year, but there’s no news yet on when it might reach these shores.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Robinson Comes Out on Top Again
Tonight’s opening festivities at the Left Coast Crime convention in Colorado Springs, Colorado, included the announcement that British-born Canadian novelist Peter Robinson has captured this year’s Dilys Award for his 2012 standalone novel, Before the Poison (Morrow). The Dilys is presented by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association (IMBA) to “the mystery title of the year which the member booksellers have most enjoyed selling.”
Also nominated for this commendation were Grandad, There’s a Head on the Beach, by Colin Cotterill (Minotaur); Broken Harbor, by Tana French (Viking); Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, by Susan Elia MacNeal (Bantam); and The Expats, by Chris Pavone (Crown).
Left Coast Crime will continue through this coming Sunday, March 25, and include the presentation of four more literary prizes.
Also nominated for this commendation were Grandad, There’s a Head on the Beach, by Colin Cotterill (Minotaur); Broken Harbor, by Tana French (Viking); Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, by Susan Elia MacNeal (Bantam); and The Expats, by Chris Pavone (Crown).
Left Coast Crime will continue through this coming Sunday, March 25, and include the presentation of four more literary prizes.
Tuesday, January 08, 2013
Robinson Sheds Some Light on “Dark”
2013 begins my third year as a blogger-columnist for the Kirkus
Reviews Web site. Together with this numerical change in the calendar come some conspicuous alterations in the site’s appearance. My Mysteries and Thrillers column, along with others focusing on different genres of fiction and categories of books, has undergone a redesign that I think gives it added snap and precision. The downside, unfortunately, is that hundreds of Facebook “likes” seem 
to have vanished ... though that’s still not as bad as what happened during a previous design revision, when dozens of reader comments were swallowed up into the electronic ether, never to be seen or read again.
In any event, my opening column of 2013, posted earlier today, is an interview with Peter Robinson, the 62-year-old, British-born Canadian author of Watching the Dark (Morrow). That police procedural--released this week in the States (and last summer in the UK)--is the 20th to feature Robinson’s popular series sleuth, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks, along with Banks’ colleague and former lover, Annie Cabbot. The story finds the headstrong DCI investigating the unusual crossbow murder of a fellow inspector, Bill Quinn, who left behind some rather compromising photographs of himself with “a very beautiful, and very young, woman.” Whether the late copper’s demise is related to that sexual encounter, or maybe to a six-year-old case he had continued to pursue, involving the disappearance of a young British bridesmaid in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, will be up to Banks to determine. But his job won’t be made any easier by an officer from Professional Standards, who’s determined to dog Banks’ every step in order to resolve whether Quinn was guilty of corruption as well as concupiscence.
Click here to read my new Kirkus column about Robinson.
J. Kingston Pierce: When I last interviewed you, back in 1999, you were still considered an underappreciated Canadian crime writer. But that was before your 10th Banks novel, In a Dry Season, really took off. Am I correct in calling that your “breakout book”? And how have your career and audience reception changed over the last 13 years?
Peter Robinson: In a Dry Season was certainly a “breakout book” in many ways. It was nominated for several awards, even won a couple, and got my name better known in the UK and throughout mainland Europe. It was also very successful in the U.S., although I’m not sure it gave me the same sort of boost in Canada, as I was already better known there than in most other places. The biggest change of all really came in the UK. I was used to being practically ignored there for about 10 books, barely surviving with very limited print runs of the last few hardcovers, and no paperbacks at all for a while. Now my books regularly top the bestseller charts there.
JKP: Are there any negative aspects to producing a successful series?
PR: Only in that it becomes what people expect of you. I was extremely pleased with the fan reaction to Before the Poison because it was a risk, and most people said they loved it. There was still an undercurrent of “but I’m looking forward to the next Banks” in some responses, though! Still, it is also enormously flattering to think you’ve created a series character about whom people want to continue reading, especially when you see so many series fall by the wayside.
JKP: Do you ever want to toss in the idea of writing a series at all, and just compose standalones? Or maybe a different series?
PR: No, I can’t see dumping the series altogether, and I don’t think I would like to take on another series, but I would definitely like to write more standalones. I have always admired Ruth Rendell and envied her ability to switch from [Chief Inspector Reginald] Wexford to psychological thrillers, and to “Barbara Vine.” I’m not as prolific as she is, but I could see alternating Banks and standalones, or maybe two Banks then a one-off. Something like that.
JKP: Unlike some other series, your 20 books about Alan Banks have allowed the character to change and evolve in significant ways over the decades. He’s weathered the end of his marriage, the growth of his children, assorted ill-conceived relationships, and the retirements of several police colleagues. Do you think all of that has made him more human in the eyes of readers? And are you puzzled by writers less willing to let their characters evolve?
PR: I don’t think I would still be writing about Banks if I hadn’t set out quite early on to compose a series about a man who happened to work as a police detective,
and about some of the things that happen to him in his work and in his life. I just had no idea it would run to more than 20 books!
I’m not really puzzled by writers who are less willing to let their characters evolve. After all, neither Sherlock Holmes nor Hercule Poirot changed that much. Sometimes a character exists simply to solve crimes in a particularly clever and eccentric way, and that is all that interests us about him or her. I think a lot of readers identify with Banks, and perhaps the things that happen in his private life, including his quiet moments with music and a glass of wine, do make him more human and make the cases he works on seem more real, or at least more believable. Also, as he ages, he encounters many of the same problems most of us do--children move away, friends die, one’s time seems to be running out more quickly, the specter of serious illness appears--and it tends to make him more introspective and philosophical, even melancholy.
JKP: When Banks’ younger colleague, Annie Cabbot, first appeared in In a Dry Season, I presumed that she was finally somebody in whose company he could be happy. Yet their relationship has been often troubled. Did you intend that from the start?
PR: I don’t even know what’s going to happen in the book I’m writing at the moment, let alone in future books. I think the Banks/Annie relationship has developed in interesting ways that I would never have guessed when I first put them together. They are still very close, and there’s still a strong attraction, but in many ways it is the job that keeps them apart. ... Banks needs to be kept on his toes, and Annie is particularly good at winding him up. It’s interesting to see her role change subtly as other female characters appear on the scene--such as [Detective Constable] Winsome [Jackman], Joanna Passero, and the new detective constable Gerry Masterson, who takes a more prominent role in the book I’m working on now. Annie becomes in some ways a public defender of her boss and his methods, but she still gives him a hard time when there’s no one else around to hear.
JKP: So let me ask this: You keep throwing new feminine enticements in Alan Banks’ path. In Watching the Dark, you introduce that woman you just mentioned, Inspector Joanna Passero, from Professional Standards. Can we expect to see more of her in the future?
PR: I wish I knew. I can see a role for Joanna, because I grew to like her as a character, and she may well become another cross for Banks to bear. She will move out of Professional Standards and into some other department with which Banks will have to deal on occasion. As far as romance goes, I have no idea. He might like the idea of unleashing the repressed passions of an icy Hitchcock blonde, but are there any to be unleashed, and could he do it? And how would Annie feel about it? Watch this space.
JKP: How old is Alan Banks now, and how many more years do you think he has as a series lead? Will you keep him going even after retirement, as Ian Rankin seems determined to do with John Rebus?
PR: Banks’ age is a tricky matter, because although there’s usually one book per year, the cases he works on may have taken place only months apart, so he hasn’t actually aged a whole year between books. This keeps him a few years younger than me and a few steps away from retirement. If he ever gets promoted to superintendent he could stay on until the age of 65, but I doubt if any of my readers would regard Banks as suitable material for promotion! But retiring Banks is not something I worry about too much. There are still a few books left to write about him, and I just hope I realize when I have come to the end. I doubt even then that I would retire him or kill him off. I’d probably have him promoted, against all odds, to chief constable, marry Annie, and live happily ever after. Then there would be nothing more to write about him--or nothing that anyone would want to read.
JKP: What still attracts you to the character of Alan Banks?
PR: In the face of everything he has seen and learned about the human condition, and in spite of everything that has happened to him, he still enjoys life, believes in people, and has a generally optimistic outlook. No matter how much life and work throw at him, he always manages to get up, dust himself off, and carry on.
(Left) The DCI Banks pilot, based on the 2001 novel Aftermath.
JKP: Your novels have inspired a British ITV series, DCI Banks, which is debuting this month in America on PBS-TV stations. How do you feel about actor Stephen Tompkinson stepping into the lead role you’ve spent so many years in developing?
PR: I have tremendous respect for Stephen Tompkinson, and though he certainly didn’t match my idea of what Banks looks like, I think that he has developed the character wonderfully over the series so far. Many viewers may be disappointed that he doesn’t match their physical idea of Banks, either, but my advice is to give him a chance and approach the series with an open mind. No, it’s not the same as the books, but it is an entertaining TV cop show.
JKP: ITV hasn’t yet produced episodes of DCI Banks based on every one of your series installments. Have you been surprised at all by which books it has chosen to adapt?
PR: I have no idea why they choose the books they do. They’re the professionals, so far be it from me to tell them their business. We’ve have some discussions, and while they welcome my suggestions, they are obviously more aware of what will work and what won’t. I would like to see some of the more recent ones filmed--Friend of the Devil is the most recent [book transformed into a DCI Banks episode] so far--and I would also like to see an attempt at In a Dry Season, though I admit that would really be a challenge after the weather in Yorkshire last year. The other novel with a hook into the past which I think could work well is Piece of My Heart, but I doubt that we’d be able to get Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and The Who to sign up, though Pete Townshend is an affirmed Banks fan.
JKP: Of course, there might be opportunities to turn some of your standalone novels into TV or movie productions.
PR: I have never done an adaptation, and I’ve been told often enough that a writer would be a fool to adapt his own work, but I’d really like to have a go at Before the Poison. It presents all kinds of problems that I think would be interesting to try and solve, and could make a really good mini-series or something. I can even see Michelle Dockery, who plays Lady Mary in Downton Abbey, as Grace Fox!
JKP: Finally, you’re a British writer working in Canada, who rarely stages scenes in Canada. Yet there are many Canadian crime novelists--most of whom, unfortunately, are completely unknown to American readers. Why do think that is? Is it simply a matter of poor marketing, or are the tales Canadian crime novelists tell not the sort destined to appeal to U.S. crime-fiction fans?
PR: It’s probably a bit of both. Canadian publishers don’t do a great deal of out-of-Canada promotion, and Canadian writers rarely have separate U.S. deals. Also, I’m not sure that the majority of Americans are interested in reading about Canada, though the ones who are are quite passionate and knowledgeable about the place. A number of Canadian crime writers try to get over this lack of interest by setting their books in the U.S., so you probably think they’re American writers, anyway!
JKP: Can you recommend a few Canadian crime-fictionists whose work might be interesting to American readers?
PR: You may have heard of some of these, but crime fans should definitely try Giles Blunt, Louise Penny, Linwood Barclay, Maureen Jennings, John Lawrence Reynolds, and Gail Bowen. There are many more, and they will hate me for not mentioning their names, but if anyone is interested in Canadian crime fiction they can check out the Crime Writers of Canada Web site.
In any event, my opening column of 2013, posted earlier today, is an interview with Peter Robinson, the 62-year-old, British-born Canadian author of Watching the Dark (Morrow). That police procedural--released this week in the States (and last summer in the UK)--is the 20th to feature Robinson’s popular series sleuth, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks, along with Banks’ colleague and former lover, Annie Cabbot. The story finds the headstrong DCI investigating the unusual crossbow murder of a fellow inspector, Bill Quinn, who left behind some rather compromising photographs of himself with “a very beautiful, and very young, woman.” Whether the late copper’s demise is related to that sexual encounter, or maybe to a six-year-old case he had continued to pursue, involving the disappearance of a young British bridesmaid in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, will be up to Banks to determine. But his job won’t be made any easier by an officer from Professional Standards, who’s determined to dog Banks’ every step in order to resolve whether Quinn was guilty of corruption as well as concupiscence.
Click here to read my new Kirkus column about Robinson.
* * *
While putting that piece together, of course, I had to jettison large parts of my discussion with the author; they simply didn’t fit within the length restriction. Not being one to waste good material, I have posted the balance of our exchange below.J. Kingston Pierce: When I last interviewed you, back in 1999, you were still considered an underappreciated Canadian crime writer. But that was before your 10th Banks novel, In a Dry Season, really took off. Am I correct in calling that your “breakout book”? And how have your career and audience reception changed over the last 13 years?
Peter Robinson: In a Dry Season was certainly a “breakout book” in many ways. It was nominated for several awards, even won a couple, and got my name better known in the UK and throughout mainland Europe. It was also very successful in the U.S., although I’m not sure it gave me the same sort of boost in Canada, as I was already better known there than in most other places. The biggest change of all really came in the UK. I was used to being practically ignored there for about 10 books, barely surviving with very limited print runs of the last few hardcovers, and no paperbacks at all for a while. Now my books regularly top the bestseller charts there.
JKP: Are there any negative aspects to producing a successful series?
PR: Only in that it becomes what people expect of you. I was extremely pleased with the fan reaction to Before the Poison because it was a risk, and most people said they loved it. There was still an undercurrent of “but I’m looking forward to the next Banks” in some responses, though! Still, it is also enormously flattering to think you’ve created a series character about whom people want to continue reading, especially when you see so many series fall by the wayside.
JKP: Do you ever want to toss in the idea of writing a series at all, and just compose standalones? Or maybe a different series?
PR: No, I can’t see dumping the series altogether, and I don’t think I would like to take on another series, but I would definitely like to write more standalones. I have always admired Ruth Rendell and envied her ability to switch from [Chief Inspector Reginald] Wexford to psychological thrillers, and to “Barbara Vine.” I’m not as prolific as she is, but I could see alternating Banks and standalones, or maybe two Banks then a one-off. Something like that.
JKP: Unlike some other series, your 20 books about Alan Banks have allowed the character to change and evolve in significant ways over the decades. He’s weathered the end of his marriage, the growth of his children, assorted ill-conceived relationships, and the retirements of several police colleagues. Do you think all of that has made him more human in the eyes of readers? And are you puzzled by writers less willing to let their characters evolve?
PR: I don’t think I would still be writing about Banks if I hadn’t set out quite early on to compose a series about a man who happened to work as a police detective,
I’m not really puzzled by writers who are less willing to let their characters evolve. After all, neither Sherlock Holmes nor Hercule Poirot changed that much. Sometimes a character exists simply to solve crimes in a particularly clever and eccentric way, and that is all that interests us about him or her. I think a lot of readers identify with Banks, and perhaps the things that happen in his private life, including his quiet moments with music and a glass of wine, do make him more human and make the cases he works on seem more real, or at least more believable. Also, as he ages, he encounters many of the same problems most of us do--children move away, friends die, one’s time seems to be running out more quickly, the specter of serious illness appears--and it tends to make him more introspective and philosophical, even melancholy.
JKP: When Banks’ younger colleague, Annie Cabbot, first appeared in In a Dry Season, I presumed that she was finally somebody in whose company he could be happy. Yet their relationship has been often troubled. Did you intend that from the start?
PR: I don’t even know what’s going to happen in the book I’m writing at the moment, let alone in future books. I think the Banks/Annie relationship has developed in interesting ways that I would never have guessed when I first put them together. They are still very close, and there’s still a strong attraction, but in many ways it is the job that keeps them apart. ... Banks needs to be kept on his toes, and Annie is particularly good at winding him up. It’s interesting to see her role change subtly as other female characters appear on the scene--such as [Detective Constable] Winsome [Jackman], Joanna Passero, and the new detective constable Gerry Masterson, who takes a more prominent role in the book I’m working on now. Annie becomes in some ways a public defender of her boss and his methods, but she still gives him a hard time when there’s no one else around to hear.
JKP: So let me ask this: You keep throwing new feminine enticements in Alan Banks’ path. In Watching the Dark, you introduce that woman you just mentioned, Inspector Joanna Passero, from Professional Standards. Can we expect to see more of her in the future?
PR: I wish I knew. I can see a role for Joanna, because I grew to like her as a character, and she may well become another cross for Banks to bear. She will move out of Professional Standards and into some other department with which Banks will have to deal on occasion. As far as romance goes, I have no idea. He might like the idea of unleashing the repressed passions of an icy Hitchcock blonde, but are there any to be unleashed, and could he do it? And how would Annie feel about it? Watch this space.
JKP: How old is Alan Banks now, and how many more years do you think he has as a series lead? Will you keep him going even after retirement, as Ian Rankin seems determined to do with John Rebus?
PR: Banks’ age is a tricky matter, because although there’s usually one book per year, the cases he works on may have taken place only months apart, so he hasn’t actually aged a whole year between books. This keeps him a few years younger than me and a few steps away from retirement. If he ever gets promoted to superintendent he could stay on until the age of 65, but I doubt if any of my readers would regard Banks as suitable material for promotion! But retiring Banks is not something I worry about too much. There are still a few books left to write about him, and I just hope I realize when I have come to the end. I doubt even then that I would retire him or kill him off. I’d probably have him promoted, against all odds, to chief constable, marry Annie, and live happily ever after. Then there would be nothing more to write about him--or nothing that anyone would want to read.
JKP: What still attracts you to the character of Alan Banks?
PR: In the face of everything he has seen and learned about the human condition, and in spite of everything that has happened to him, he still enjoys life, believes in people, and has a generally optimistic outlook. No matter how much life and work throw at him, he always manages to get up, dust himself off, and carry on.
(Left) The DCI Banks pilot, based on the 2001 novel Aftermath.
JKP: Your novels have inspired a British ITV series, DCI Banks, which is debuting this month in America on PBS-TV stations. How do you feel about actor Stephen Tompkinson stepping into the lead role you’ve spent so many years in developing?
PR: I have tremendous respect for Stephen Tompkinson, and though he certainly didn’t match my idea of what Banks looks like, I think that he has developed the character wonderfully over the series so far. Many viewers may be disappointed that he doesn’t match their physical idea of Banks, either, but my advice is to give him a chance and approach the series with an open mind. No, it’s not the same as the books, but it is an entertaining TV cop show.
JKP: ITV hasn’t yet produced episodes of DCI Banks based on every one of your series installments. Have you been surprised at all by which books it has chosen to adapt?
PR: I have no idea why they choose the books they do. They’re the professionals, so far be it from me to tell them their business. We’ve have some discussions, and while they welcome my suggestions, they are obviously more aware of what will work and what won’t. I would like to see some of the more recent ones filmed--Friend of the Devil is the most recent [book transformed into a DCI Banks episode] so far--and I would also like to see an attempt at In a Dry Season, though I admit that would really be a challenge after the weather in Yorkshire last year. The other novel with a hook into the past which I think could work well is Piece of My Heart, but I doubt that we’d be able to get Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and The Who to sign up, though Pete Townshend is an affirmed Banks fan.
JKP: Of course, there might be opportunities to turn some of your standalone novels into TV or movie productions.
PR: I have never done an adaptation, and I’ve been told often enough that a writer would be a fool to adapt his own work, but I’d really like to have a go at Before the Poison. It presents all kinds of problems that I think would be interesting to try and solve, and could make a really good mini-series or something. I can even see Michelle Dockery, who plays Lady Mary in Downton Abbey, as Grace Fox!
JKP: Finally, you’re a British writer working in Canada, who rarely stages scenes in Canada. Yet there are many Canadian crime novelists--most of whom, unfortunately, are completely unknown to American readers. Why do think that is? Is it simply a matter of poor marketing, or are the tales Canadian crime novelists tell not the sort destined to appeal to U.S. crime-fiction fans?
PR: It’s probably a bit of both. Canadian publishers don’t do a great deal of out-of-Canada promotion, and Canadian writers rarely have separate U.S. deals. Also, I’m not sure that the majority of Americans are interested in reading about Canada, though the ones who are are quite passionate and knowledgeable about the place. A number of Canadian crime writers try to get over this lack of interest by setting their books in the U.S., so you probably think they’re American writers, anyway!
JKP: Can you recommend a few Canadian crime-fictionists whose work might be interesting to American readers?
PR: You may have heard of some of these, but crime fans should definitely try Giles Blunt, Louise Penny, Linwood Barclay, Maureen Jennings, John Lawrence Reynolds, and Gail Bowen. There are many more, and they will hate me for not mentioning their names, but if anyone is interested in Canadian crime fiction they can check out the Crime Writers of Canada Web site.
* * *
In the video below, Peter Robinson looks back at how he went about developing his new Alan Banks novel, Watching the Dark.Monday, December 03, 2012
Bits and Bytes
• J.K. Rowling’s recent novel for adults, The Casual Vacancy, has received some negative reviews in the press as well as from fans of her best-selling Harry Potter fantasy series. Yet Britain’s BBC One and BBC Drama have reached a deal to create a TV series based on that book about a small English town rife with hidden class and inter-generational struggles. Rowling,
who will reportedly be involved in the book’s adaptation, is quoted in The Hollywood Reporter as saying, “I always felt that, if [The Casual Vacancy] were to be adapted, this novel was best suited to
television, and I think the BBC is the perfect home.” Plans are to debut the
series in 2014.
• Does this 1945 novel by Richard Foster really feature “mysterydom’s only Tibetan-American private detective”?
• A few days ago, I featured in The Rap Sheet a Christmas episode of Man Against Crime, the 1949-1956 TV private-eye series. Today, the blog Classic American Showbiz leads us to a special 1974 Christmas episode of the police drama Adam-12.
• British-born Canadian author Peter Robinson reports on his Web site that DCI Banks, the UK TV production based on his long-running series of Inspector Alan Banks books, and starring Stephen Tompkinson, “is coming to PBS all across the United States.” Although I don’t yet see any notice of this development on PBS’s Web site, Robinson says the series will debut on this side of the Atlantic sometime in January. I’m very familiar with Robinson’s series (after interviewing the author for January Magazine more than decade ago) and have read a number of favorable notices about DCI Banks in Robin Jarossi’s Crime Time Preview blog. So this is a show I’d be very happy to add to my otherwise quite limited TV-watching schedule. To see a preview of DCI Banks’ pilot, based on Robinson’s 2001 novel, Aftermath, I refer you back to the author’s Web site. UPDATE: The Crimespree Magazine blog now reports that DCI Banks will debut on PBS “in the 2nd week of January.”
• Prolific novelist James Reasoner is the subject of a new interview in the online pub Lowestoft Chronicle. To read it, click here. Meanwhile, Pittsburgh writer Kathleen George is interviewed by Jeff Rutherford as part of his Reading & Writing podcast. Listen here.
• After many delays, the complete series DVD set of McMillan & Wife (1971-1977)--starring Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James as a crime-solving police commissioner and his trouble-attracting spouse--is finally set for release tomorrow. It contains 24 discs and boasts a retail price of $169.99.
• Really? The TV series The Killing may return to AMC? What about rumors that this show would wind up instead on Netflix?
• Blogger Jen Forbus offers her nominations for “crime fiction’s sexiest female authors of 2012.” I can only assume that a compilation of male writers will soon be forthcoming.
• R.I.P., Charles E. Fritch, at one time the assistant editor of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. He passed away in October. UPDATE: William F. Nolan has penned a fine memorial to Fritch here.
• And here’s an unusual YouTube find: The 1972 teleflick The Hound of the Baskervilles. Adapted of course from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1902 novel of that same name, this small-screen version of the tale featured English film actor Stewart Granger as Sherlock Holmes and Bernard Fox as Doctor John H. Watson. As I’ve explained before on this page, the movie (which also featured William Shatner) was a failed pilot for an ABC-TV series. I have watched this Hound twice, as I recall, but have not seen it in many years. If you would like a gander at it yourself, simply click here. I notice that the superior 1988 TV version of Hound, produced as part of Jeremy Brett’s wonderful Sherlock Holmes series, can also be viewed on YouTube. As can the 1939 theatrical rendition starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Hound of the Baskervilles fans (like me) could devote much of a day just to comparing these adaptations. Time well spent, I think.
• Does this 1945 novel by Richard Foster really feature “mysterydom’s only Tibetan-American private detective”?
• A few days ago, I featured in The Rap Sheet a Christmas episode of Man Against Crime, the 1949-1956 TV private-eye series. Today, the blog Classic American Showbiz leads us to a special 1974 Christmas episode of the police drama Adam-12.
• British-born Canadian author Peter Robinson reports on his Web site that DCI Banks, the UK TV production based on his long-running series of Inspector Alan Banks books, and starring Stephen Tompkinson, “is coming to PBS all across the United States.” Although I don’t yet see any notice of this development on PBS’s Web site, Robinson says the series will debut on this side of the Atlantic sometime in January. I’m very familiar with Robinson’s series (after interviewing the author for January Magazine more than decade ago) and have read a number of favorable notices about DCI Banks in Robin Jarossi’s Crime Time Preview blog. So this is a show I’d be very happy to add to my otherwise quite limited TV-watching schedule. To see a preview of DCI Banks’ pilot, based on Robinson’s 2001 novel, Aftermath, I refer you back to the author’s Web site. UPDATE: The Crimespree Magazine blog now reports that DCI Banks will debut on PBS “in the 2nd week of January.”
• Prolific novelist James Reasoner is the subject of a new interview in the online pub Lowestoft Chronicle. To read it, click here. Meanwhile, Pittsburgh writer Kathleen George is interviewed by Jeff Rutherford as part of his Reading & Writing podcast. Listen here.
• After many delays, the complete series DVD set of McMillan & Wife (1971-1977)--starring Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James as a crime-solving police commissioner and his trouble-attracting spouse--is finally set for release tomorrow. It contains 24 discs and boasts a retail price of $169.99.
• Really? The TV series The Killing may return to AMC? What about rumors that this show would wind up instead on Netflix?
• Blogger Jen Forbus offers her nominations for “crime fiction’s sexiest female authors of 2012.” I can only assume that a compilation of male writers will soon be forthcoming.
• R.I.P., Charles E. Fritch, at one time the assistant editor of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. He passed away in October. UPDATE: William F. Nolan has penned a fine memorial to Fritch here.
• And here’s an unusual YouTube find: The 1972 teleflick The Hound of the Baskervilles. Adapted of course from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1902 novel of that same name, this small-screen version of the tale featured English film actor Stewart Granger as Sherlock Holmes and Bernard Fox as Doctor John H. Watson. As I’ve explained before on this page, the movie (which also featured William Shatner) was a failed pilot for an ABC-TV series. I have watched this Hound twice, as I recall, but have not seen it in many years. If you would like a gander at it yourself, simply click here. I notice that the superior 1988 TV version of Hound, produced as part of Jeremy Brett’s wonderful Sherlock Holmes series, can also be viewed on YouTube. As can the 1939 theatrical rendition starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Hound of the Baskervilles fans (like me) could devote much of a day just to comparing these adaptations. Time well spent, I think.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Robinson’s “Poison” Takes the Prize
During a banquet tonight in Toronto, the Crime Writers of Canada announced the winners of its 2012 Arthur Ellis Awards as follows:
Best Crime Novel:
Before the Poison, by Peter Robinson (McClelland & Stewart)
Also nominated: A Trick of the Light, by Louise Penny (St. Martin’s Press); I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, by Alan Bradley (Doubleday Canada); I’ll See You in My Dreams, by William Deverell (McClelland & Stewart); and The Guilty Plea, by Robert Rotenberg (Simon & Schuster)
Best First Novel:
The Water Rat of Wanchai, by Ian Hamilton (House of Anansi Press)
Also nominated: The Man Who Killed, by Fraser Nixon (Douglas & McIntrye); The Survivor, by Sean Slater (Simon & Schuster); Tight Corner, by Roger White (BPS Books); and Watching Jeopardy, by Norm Foster (XLibris)
Best Crime Book in French:
La chorale du diable, by Martin Michaud (Les Editions Guelette)
Also nominated: Pwazon, by Diane Vincent (Editors Triptyque) and Pour Ne Pas Mourir ce soir, by Guillaume Lapierre-Desnoyers (Levesque Editeur)
Best Juvenile or Young Adult Crime Book:
Blink & Caution, by Tim Wynne-Jones (Candlewick Press)
Also nominated: Charlie’s Key, by Rob Mills (Orca); Empire of Ruins, by Arthur Slade (HarperCollins); Held, by Edeet Ravel (Annick Press); and Missing, by Becky Citra (Orca)
Best Crime Non-fiction:
Hot Art: Chasing Thieves and Detectives Through the Secret World of Stolen Art, by Joshua Knelman (Douglas & McIntyre)
Also nominated: A Season in Hell, by Robert Fowler (HarperCollins); The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, by Steven Laffoley (Pottersfield); The Pirates of Somalia, by Jay Bahader (HarperCollins); and The Weasel: A Double Life in the Mob, by Adrian Humphreys (Wiley)
Best Crime Short Story:
“What Kelly Did,” by Catherine Astolfo (North Word Magazine)
Also nominated: “A New Pair of Pants,” by Jas. R. Petrin (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, September 2011); “Beer Money,” by Shane Nelson (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, February 2011); “The Girl with the Golden Hair,” by Scott Mackay (EQMM, December 2011); and “The Perfect Mark,” by Melodie Campbell (Flash Fiction, July 2011)
Best Unpublished First Novel (“Unhanged Arthur”):
Last of the Independents, by Sam Wiebe
Also nominated: Gunning for Bear, by Madeleine Harris-Callway; Snake in the Snow, by William Bonnell; The Rhymester, by Valerie A. Drego; and Too Far to Fall, by Shane Sawyer
Congratulations to all of the nominees!
(Hat tip to Crime Watch.)
Best Crime Novel:
Before the Poison, by Peter Robinson (McClelland & Stewart)
Also nominated: A Trick of the Light, by Louise Penny (St. Martin’s Press); I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, by Alan Bradley (Doubleday Canada); I’ll See You in My Dreams, by William Deverell (McClelland & Stewart); and The Guilty Plea, by Robert Rotenberg (Simon & Schuster)
Best First Novel:
The Water Rat of Wanchai, by Ian Hamilton (House of Anansi Press)
Also nominated: The Man Who Killed, by Fraser Nixon (Douglas & McIntrye); The Survivor, by Sean Slater (Simon & Schuster); Tight Corner, by Roger White (BPS Books); and Watching Jeopardy, by Norm Foster (XLibris)
Best Crime Book in French:
La chorale du diable, by Martin Michaud (Les Editions Guelette)
Also nominated: Pwazon, by Diane Vincent (Editors Triptyque) and Pour Ne Pas Mourir ce soir, by Guillaume Lapierre-Desnoyers (Levesque Editeur)
Best Juvenile or Young Adult Crime Book:
Blink & Caution, by Tim Wynne-Jones (Candlewick Press)
Also nominated: Charlie’s Key, by Rob Mills (Orca); Empire of Ruins, by Arthur Slade (HarperCollins); Held, by Edeet Ravel (Annick Press); and Missing, by Becky Citra (Orca)
Best Crime Non-fiction:
Hot Art: Chasing Thieves and Detectives Through the Secret World of Stolen Art, by Joshua Knelman (Douglas & McIntyre)
Also nominated: A Season in Hell, by Robert Fowler (HarperCollins); The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, by Steven Laffoley (Pottersfield); The Pirates of Somalia, by Jay Bahader (HarperCollins); and The Weasel: A Double Life in the Mob, by Adrian Humphreys (Wiley)
Best Crime Short Story:
“What Kelly Did,” by Catherine Astolfo (North Word Magazine)
Also nominated: “A New Pair of Pants,” by Jas. R. Petrin (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, September 2011); “Beer Money,” by Shane Nelson (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, February 2011); “The Girl with the Golden Hair,” by Scott Mackay (EQMM, December 2011); and “The Perfect Mark,” by Melodie Campbell (Flash Fiction, July 2011)
Best Unpublished First Novel (“Unhanged Arthur”):
Last of the Independents, by Sam Wiebe
Also nominated: Gunning for Bear, by Madeleine Harris-Callway; Snake in the Snow, by William Bonnell; The Rhymester, by Valerie A. Drego; and Too Far to Fall, by Shane Sawyer
Congratulations to all of the nominees!
(Hat tip to Crime Watch.)
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Here’s to You, Mr. Robinson
We’ve been hearing a lot from the British media about the scandal that’s recently enveloped First Minister of Northern Ireland Peter Robinson. If you don’t know already, 
his 60-year-old “born again” politician wife, Iris, resigned her office in the wake of reports that she’d had an extramarital relationship with a 19-year-old male. But it seems that this affair has led to some angry messages being misaddressed to another Peter Robinson, the British-born Canadian creator of police Inspector Alan Banks and the author of 2009’s The Price of Love and Other Stories (shown above, with fellow wordsmith Stephen King).
This is what happens when you let some people near the Internet without adult supervision. As the BBC reports:
A best selling crime writer has appealed for people to stop e-mailing him about the Northern Ireland Robinson scandal. Last week it emerged that Iris Robinson, the wife of First Minister Peter Robinson, and an MP herself, had cheated on him and tried to take her own life. She also obtained £50,000 from two developers so [her young lover] could set himself up in business, which she failed to declare to a planning meeting. There has been phenomenal interest in the story, which Yorkshire author Peter Robinson has found himself distantly connected to. More used to writing about the adventures of Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks on the streets of the fictional town of Eastvale, Mr. Robinson has been sent condolences about his wife’s behaviour.Author Robinson has issued this statement on his Web site:
Many thanks to all of you who have offered me your support in my time of difficulty--especially the person who said my wife was a homophobic slut who needed a good slapping around, and the other who suggested that I turn to Jesus Christ as my Saviour--but I must stress that I AM NOT Peter Robinson the politician, Northern Ireland’s First Minister. I would have thought InspectorBanks.com would be the first clue, as would even the most cursory glance at the site, but I guess people who send rude and insulting e-mails or push religion at the vulnerable were not, alas, at the front of the queue when the brains were handed out.Methinks this case of mistaken identity requires the immediate and scrupulous attention of Inspector Banks.
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