BOOKSHELF You can scare yourself sometimes. You can give yourself a few bad dreams G

ENIAL crime-writer Peter Robinson is happy to be back on home turf again, as he celebrates the 25th novel in his hugely successful DCI Banks series.

The Yorkshire-born author can’t quite believe the anniversary, and admits it’s become more difficult to think of new plots for his famous detective, brought to life by Stephen Tompkinson in the popular TV adaptation, and his sidekick DS Annie Cabbot (Andrea Lowe in the TV series).

“In the last few books, I’ve looked more towards stories that are in the news than I did previously,” Peter explains. “It becomes more difficult, simply because you use up material with each book.”

The award-winning writer now lives in Toronto, Canada, but also has a cottage in Richmond, Yorkshire.

He emigrated in 1974, to continue his studies after doing an English literature degree at Leeds University. He went on to do an MA in English and creative writing at Canada’s University of Windsor, with American author Joyce Carol Oates as his tutor.

For years, he only wrote poetry, and created Inspector Banks to stave off the homesickness he was feeling, imagining himself back in Yorkshire.

“At night, I would write crime just to relax. Before crime fiction, I was writing poetry and had a part-time teaching job, which was enough to get by.”

His wife, Sheila, a lawyer whom he met in Canada after giving a writing talk at a school her son attended (they’d both been married before), is the first person who sees each new book.

Careless Love is the opening As his 25th DCI Banks novel is published, author Peter Robinson talks to

about researching creepy plots and keeping up with the times book in his first trilogy, beginning could you do that?’ And I have to with two suspicious deaths – a explain: ‘I didn’t do it – she’s still university student discovered in an alive in the books!’ abandoned car on the Yorkshire “I thought Stephen was excellent moors and a well-dressed man as Banks, when I got used to the found in wild moorland, partially idea of him not particularly looking devoured by animals. like my idea of the character. And

“One of the plots involves an old Andrea was great as Annie.” adversary of Banks and Annie who Peter, 68, writes a book a year, escaped – you know, the one that but hasn’t aged Banks in the same got away – and they get some time frame. The detective is older information that he’s around again. but not 30 years older (the first That strand’s going to run through Banks novel was published 31 years the next two books as well,” he says. ago). Yet he has changed over the

He admits advances in forensic years. science have made the job of the “Things have changed in his life, crime writer more difficult. cases have affected him. He’s

“I sometimes wish that I were become perhaps more philosophical, writing books set in a period before more melancholy. His kids DNA and the internet. It does get have left home, he’s split up with very complicated because you have his wife. He’s become a bit more to try to keep up with things, and isolated and more a lonely there’s a fair bit about social media character. He’s less gregarious than in Careless Love. To be honest, I’m he was in the earlier books.” not a social media person so it all When in the UK, Peter loves had to be researched. If you go catching up with friends and back to the old days, setting your getting a blast of the Yorkshire books in the Fifties, you’ve got just Dales. He often bumps into pals, an old handset telephone, typewriter including Ian Rankin, Michael and little grey cells.” Connolly, Mark Billingham

His work reached a greater and Ann Cleeves, on the audience thanks to the hit DCI crime-writing festival Banks TV series, which ran from circuit. 2010-16, but there are no plans for “We don’t talk about its return. Peter says he feels sad crime, we just complain the storylines veered completely about publishers,” he says away from the original books. with a chuckle.

“They got a little bit lost there. In He says he watches too the last series, they killed off one of much television and keeps the major characters (Annie). I’ve abreast of crime drama – he had emails about that, saying ‘How loved Happy Valley and Line Of Duty – and when he’s writing his thrillers, sometimes he spooks himself.

“Writing Aftermath was one of the spookiest ones, researching the killer couples like the Wests and (Ian) Brady and (Myra) Hindley and trying to assume that perspective to some extent.

“Part of the reason for writing that kind of book is maybe to try and make sense of how those things can happen, and I don’t think that I did, I don’t think I ever made sense of it, but you can scare yourself sometimes, in the sense that you can give yourself a few bad dreams.”

For now, he has no intention of of retiring. Completing the trilogy will take at least another couple of years, he reckons.

“Writers don’t usually retire, do they? I’ve still got a way to go to that and, as long as I can do it, I’ll keep on doing it.”