PETER ROBINSON reading with LEN GASPARINI, LOUISE PENNY and LISA SCOTTOLINE Saturday (October 23), 8 pm, Brigantine Room at a round table with SOPHIE HANNAH, MICHAEL ROBOTHAM and ERIC WRIGHT October 30, 3 pm, Brigantine Room receiving the Harbourfront Festival Prize at the Giller shortlisters event, October 30, 8 pm Fleck Dance Theatre.
Local crime novelist Peter Robinson has a lot to be happy about. He’s just won this year’s Harbourfront Festival Prize, and it’s only the second time in the 37-year history of the International Festival of Authors that it’s been awarded to a writer of genre fiction.
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From the road on his way to give a reading in London, Ontario, Robinson agrees that crime fiction often gets a bad rap from the literary establishment.
“It’s nice to get some recognition for crime writing in an area where it’s not usually given,” he says. “The same thing just happened in Australia. I was down there on tour recently and a crime writer named Peter Temple won [the Miles Franklin Literary Award]. So, yeah, it’s nice to see more of that happening.”
Before taking up the genre with the introduction of the Inspector Banks novels in 1987, Robinson wrote short stories and poetry. And while he doesn’t write much poetry anymore “because the impulse goes into the prose,” its influence is evident in the novels.
“Toward the end of the time I was writing poetry, I was more interested in poetic structure and narrative poetry and sense of place, and I think a lot of those things go into writing crime fiction.”
There’s a strong sense of place in the Banks novels, which Robinson chose to set in his native Yorkshire.
“There was a bit of homesickness, a bit of nostalgia, and writing about Yorkshire helped alleviate that. But really, I hadn’t been in Canada very long, so how could I presume to write about it. There would have been people saying, ‘What’s this upstart doing, thinking he can write about Canada when he’s just landed here?'”
One thing Robinson does know is music – you could build a strong musical library from the books – and he admits to sharing his wide-ranging tastes with the iPod-carrying Banks. It’s one way he keeps the series, now at 19 books, fresh.
“I tend to put things in the books that are impressing me at the time. Like Banks in the novels, I keep my ears open for new stuff. And I still listen to the old 60s rock and Miles Davis, and I have my classical favourites, too.”
In a refreshing departure from the usual formula, Robinson has allowed Banks to age, more or less in real time, over the series. But he won’t be retiring any time soon.
“I can avoid that for a long time by having the cases relatively close together. I mean, it’ll happen, but I can control it to some extent,” he says.
And the mature Banks has at last had a relationship with a woman his own age in the latest book, Bad Boy, he hooks up with a grandmother. Robinson says the decision wasn’t a political one.
“No, it’s just that she was an attractive grandmother. I know attractive grandmothers, so I thought, Why not have one in?”
Another thing that puts a lift in Robinson’s voice is that one of his earlier novels, Aftermath, has been adapted for Britain’s ITV network. If the series goes ahead, there’s a good chance it will be picked up here.
“It got very good ratings and sort of mixed reviews as most of these things do,” Robinson says. “I think Stephen Tompkinson is very good as Banks.”
Though Robinson had no involvement in the drama’s making, he did snag a small walk-on part.
“It was fun,” he says. “I mean, it’s hard work. There were about 10 takes, just to do that again and again because something wasn’t right. I couldn’t do it for a living.”
But with his books hitting bestseller lists around the world and the awards piling up around him, he doesn’t have to.
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