Peter Robinson, interviewed by Michael Connelly

Over the years, the NorCal East Bay chapter of Mystery Readers International has had many "At Homes"—intimate evenings with favorite mystery writers. We've hosted Anne Perry, Lawrence Block, Sue Grafton, Elizabeth George, Janet LaPierre, Sharan Newman, Laurie King, Rochelle Krich, Carolyn Hart, James Ellroy, Steven Saylor, Janet Evanovich, Eddie Muller, Taffy Cannon, and many others. These events are held in private homes, and they're similar to Literary Salons. Since so many of our cyber members and friends aren't able to attend these intimate evenings, I thought it would be fun to have a "visiting" author each month interviewed by another "visiting" author. This month we feature Peter Robinson interviewed by Michael Connelly. Peter Robinson was born in Castleford, Yorkshire, in 1950. After getting his B.A. Honours Degree in English Literature at the University of Leeds, he came to Canada and first took his M.A. in English and Creative Writing at the University of Windsor, with Joyce Carol Oates as his tutor, then a Ph.D. in English at York University. His first novel, Gallows View (1987), introduced Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks. It was short-listed for a best first novel award in Canada and for the John Creasey Award in the U.K. Ten more Banks novels have followed, including the latest, Cold is the Grave, which came out in September 2000. He has also published a book of short stories and the non-series novels Caedmon's Song and No Cure For Love. His story "The Two Ladies of Rose Cottage" won a Macavity Award in 1998. Peter has also won the Edgar Award (for his short story "Missing in Action"), the Anthony (for In a Dry Season), three Arthur Ellis Awards, and Le Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere. Peter has taught at a number of Toronto colleges and served as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Windsor, Ontario, 1992-93. He lives in Toronto with his wife, Sheila Halladay. —Janet Rudolph

Michael Connelly: Let's start with a philosophical question. In the universe of your work, where does evil come from? What I am trying to ask is in regard to Inspector Banks -- the guy has seen a lot of dark side of human nature and he must have some conclusions by now as to how the darkness gets in. Is it nurtured? Is it a virus? Is it something that is always there and just waiting for an opportunity to get out?

Peter Robinson: There are times when Banks thinks some people are born evil; other times it's a matter of nurture, or lack of it. Most of the killers in the Banks books are shocked and devastated by their crimes and can barely manage to conceal their guilt to avoid prison. Others kill in the course of carrying out a criminal business, for profit. Then there are the killers in books like Wednesday's Child or Aftermath, who kill for pleasure, often to satisfy sexual urges. Which ones are evil? One of the ideas I'd been thinking about for years was recently brought into clear focus by Ian McEwan, when he remarked that the September 11 terrorist attacks demonstrated a "failure of the imagination." If you can't imagine someone else's pain, if you have no empathy with your fellow human beings and their suffering, then killing means no more to you than swatting a fly. I know what my pain feels like, so I don't like the idea of inflicting it on someone else, but others don't necessarily have that built-in check. True evil knows no conscience. So perhaps evil is an absence of empathy, mixed with a strong need for something. It's a trait shared by many psychopaths, politicians and CEOs, so that makes a lot of sense to me.

MC: Seems to me the eternal question when it comes to series fiction is how do you keep it fresh and interesting. Do you care to answer that and perhaps enlighten me?

PR: A lot of writers seem to start off well for four or five books and then tend to fall off. It might be partly to do with tiring of the series character, the way Conan Doyle did with Sherlock Holmes, or it might be that they've used up the bulk of the material they had to write about. On the other hand, if you practice most things for a long time, you should improve. While I try to keep up to date with news headlines and forensic advances as regards plot, I think the secret, if there is one, lies in character. Banks has unfolded very slowly over the years, which still leaves me plenty to work with. If readers keep on finding out more and more about the series character, his background, his feelings about what he does and the way he handles, or mishandles, relationships, then he'll stay fresh for them. Banks's background can also supply me with plots, the same way Harry Bosch's did in The Concrete Blonde. Banks's childhood friend who disappeared was first mentioned in In A Dry Season, I think, but his bones are found in the next book, Close To Home, where we get the full story for the first time, as well as seeing Banks at home with his parents, in the house where he grew up. Readers are divided on the role the main character's personal life should play in crime fiction, but I've read enough puzzle-style mysteries to want a little more meat on my plate. I often feel I'm writing novels about a man called Banks, who happens to be a detective, and about some of the things that happen to him in his life and on his job.

MC: You seem to be a follower of Kurt Vonnegut's axiom for writing; "Make sure that on every page that everybody wants something, even if it is just a glass of water." He was talking about the importance of character. Your characters always want something. Especially Banks. How much of that is your priority as a writer?

PR: A glass of water! Most likely a pint of bitter and a couple of fingers of Laphroaig. But yes, this wanting is what drives the narrative, especially in crime fiction. It leads to conflict, too, when you have two or more people wanting different, mutually exclusive, things. In a way, we've got it made, writing about criminal investigations, because the cops always want something -- usually information and, eventually, a conviction. The criminals want something, too -- in most cases, to commit their crimes and get away with them. As a writer, knowing something of these needs helps me keep going from one page to the next and helps determine the pacing -- some needs, of course, being stronger than others. I don't usually know where I'm going to end up when I start, though, so what the characters want is not always as sharply-focused as it should be for me in an early draft. Later, of course, when I know the outcome, I can tighten up the earlier parts.

MC: How do you construct a novel? Plot first? Character journey first?

PR: I usually begin with an image of a particular place, and a body. In In A Dry Season, it was a dried-up reservoir I visited in England. In Innocent Graves, it was a foggy graveyard. The books that don't begin that way, like Wednesday's Child and Cold Is the Grave, usually stem from an idea I want to explore, then the body comes later. Most of the books, though, are explorations, which means that I don't know when I begin where the journey's going to take me. I tend to put character first and hope plot will follow, because I believe that plot stems from character. Sometimes this gets me into trouble, but I know that if I persevere I'll get through any tough spots eventually.

MC: If you consider that Banks is on a character arc or journey, where in general can you say he is going? Or is that asking you to give away the store?

PR: I can't give away much even if I wanted to because I don't know! I haven't planned out Banks's character arc from the cradle to the grave, or even over the few years of his life he spends in Eastvale. He does seem to be becoming increasingly isolated and introspective, but whether this will change significantly in future books, I don't know yet. I can see him working more urban cases, which might even mean a transfer to West Yorkshire, to my hometown of Leeds, but that's a while away. I would also like to see him in a challenging new relationship. There are quite a few things I'd like to throw at him to see how he handles them. Of course there's still his ex, Sandra, and I'm sure she has a few surprises up her sleeve. Annie Cabbot is far from out of the picture, too. It's interesting for me not to know these things, because I hope that my surprise in discovery gets across to the readers, too.

MC: What are the pluses -- if there are any -- of being an Englishman writing about the homeland from Canada?

PR: I love the place, especially Yorkshire, but for me, the distance helps enormously. It may make my view of my home country a little different, perhaps even a touch more nostalgic in the landscape descriptions, but that's fine with me. I needed the distance to gain some sort of objective view, because when I was there I was too mired in the whole thing. I know people say the class structure isn't so powerful there now, and it probably isn't, but when I grew up in working-class Yorkshire, believe me, it was. Naturally it's a lot more complex than upper, middle and working class these days, especially when you factor in the varied immigrant groups, but it's still easy enough to see the old divides from a distance, like lynchets on a medieval hillside. Though I was writing when I lived there, mostly poetry, I didn't really feel the confidence that I could succeed as a writer. Many novelists had blazed the trail for the north, significantly Keith Waterhouse, Stan Barstow, John Braine and Alan Sillitoe, but for whatever reason I still felt that this working-class kid from Leeds couldn't possibly gain acceptance into those exalted ranks. Being in Canada freed me from that, gave me the confidence I needed to write about where I came from. Still, I spent my first twenty-five years in Leeds, and Graham Greene says that "the first twenty years of life contain the whole of experience -- the rest is observation." I happen to believe that.

MC: Do you operate purely from memory or do you go back to Yorkshire and other environs for research?

PR: I go back two or three times a year. My family still lives there. Ideally, I'd like to spend maybe three or four months a year over there and the rest of the time in Toronto, but that isn't possible just now. I do need to smell the smells, hear the voices and see the sights, but I find I have a pretty good memory for those things and can reconstruct them all here in my study, or remodel them into the world I want to create. Naturally, I have plenty of books and photos, and the local newspapers are available on the Internet.

MC: A few years ago you wrote a crime novel set in Los Angeles. Talk about a challenge -- an Englishman writing about L.A. from Canada. But the result was a very fine novel. Any plans to do something like this again? How about Florida? What about Texas?

PR: Thank you for saying that, Michael. I'm glad you mention No Cure For Love. I was very pleased with that novel, but it wasn't exactly my greatest success as far as sales go! As far as I can remember, it was published here in Canada by Penguin, and that's it. Nobody else wanted it. I suppose the last thing the Americans felt they needed was an Englishman writing about them. Still, writing it was a great experience, especially the research, and I'd certainly consider taking on the USA again if a really great idea came along. I'd also consider taking Banks to the USA for a brief visit and trying to show it through his eyes, the way I did with Toronto in The Hanging Valley. I have no immediate plans for that, but it's not beyond the bounds of possibility.

MC: Do you think if a writer starts thinking he is limited by location or experience or expertise then he becomes so?

PR: In some ways you manufacture your own limitations, but in others you may actually be limited by temperament or ability. I think there are different kinds of writers, and it's important to find out what kind you are. Some writers, no matter where they live, can set a book anywhere, write about almost anything. Somehow or other, research fires their imaginations, and places they have never visited become real, times they have never lived in come to exist vividly on the page. Other writers really need the immediate stimulation of the contemporary world they're writing about, need to write directly out of their own experience, need to ride the buses and subways and listen to conversations, to hang around in bars, pubs or cafes and absorb the ambience. It's not a matter of one kind being preferable to the other--each has its strengths and weaknesses -- but it helps to find out what you're most comfortable with, what works best for you. For me, this matter is also tied to living in one place and writing about another. I first set Aftermath in my own neighbourhood in Toronto, and played with the idea for a few years while working on other books. In the end, I felt so overwhelmed by local detail, so tyrannized by reality, that my imagination couldn't get beyond getting the names of the shops on Queen Street in the right order. Yes, accuracy is very important, and there will always be readers who'll send you letters or e-mails about your errors, but for me the freedom to create my own universe is in many ways worth a few nit-picking e-mails. Of course, if I were a better writer, I'd be able to get both the imaginative universe and the details all right!

MC: Before this showed up in your e-mail, what were you working on? I don't want a general description of the book you're on. Tell us about the very page you were writing. What was happening? What does it mean?

PR: I was working on a scene from the next book, about a hundred and thirty pages in. A girl has been killed in a houseboat fire, and her boyfriend has told Banks that her stepfather, a well-respected doctor, sexually abused her. Banks has to interview the stepfather and steer around to this accusation, while keeping in mind that the man has just lost his stepdaughter and that he's the sort of person generally regarded as "above suspicion." The stepfather's most obvious response would be outrage, but I'm trying for something else. Not the easiest of balancing acts, but as you quoted earlier, "Everybody wants something, even if it's just a glass of water."

MC: Do they ever run out of single malt at Feathers?

PR: Well, they might run out of a specific brand, but as they have over 300 brands there, it's unlikely they'd ever run out of the stuff itself, for which I am most thankful!

MC: What was the question you wished I had asked you but didn't? Just the question. I don't want the answer.

PR: If you could go back to the beginning and change anything about Banks, what would you change?

Archived At Home Online Interviews:
Track 1:
Val McDermid, interviewed by Ian Rankin
Ian Rankin, interviewed by Peter Robinson
Peter Robinson, interviewed by Michael Connelly
Michael Connelly, interviewed by Laurie R. King
Laurie R. King, interviewed by Dana Stabenow
Dana Stabenow, interviewed by Jan Burke
Jan Burke, interviewed by T. Jefferson Parker
T. Jefferson Parker, interviewed by Harlan Coben
Harlan Coben, interviewed by Laura Lippman
Laura Lippman, interviewed by S.J. Rozan
S.J. Rozan, interviewed by Qiu Xiaolong
Qiu Xiaolong, interviewed by Cara Black
Cara Black, interviewed by Peter Lovesey
Peter Lovesey, interviewed by Anne Perry
Anne Perry, interviewed by Carole Nelson Douglas
Carole Nelson Douglas, interviewed by Nancy Pickard
Nancy Pickard, interviewed by Carolyn Hart

Track 2:
Ken Bruen, interviewed by Reed Farrel Coleman
Reed Farrel Coleman, interviewed by Megan Abbott
Megan Abbott, interviewed by Theresa Schwegel
Theresa Schwegel, interviewed by Michael Koryta
Michael Koryta, interviewed by Steve Hamilton

 

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