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Peter Robinson

Biography

Peter Robinson

One of the world’s most popular and acclaimed writers, Peter Robinson was the bestselling, award-winning author of the Inspector Banks series. He also wrote two short story collections and three stand-alone novels, which combined sold more than 10 million copies around the world. Among his many honors and prizes were the Edgar Award, the CWA (UK) Dagger in the Library Award, and Sweden’s Martin Beck Award. Robinson passed away in October 2022 at the age of 72 following a brief illness.

Peter Robinson

Books by Peter Robinson

by Peter Robinson - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

In November 1980, Nick Hartley returns home from a university lecture to find his house crawling with police. His ex-girlfriend, Alice Poole, has been found murdered, and her new boyfriend is missing. Nick is the prime suspect. The case quickly goes cold, but Nick cannot let it go. He embarks on a career in investigative journalism, determined to find Alice’s murderer --- but his obsession leads him down a dangerous path. Decades later, in November 2019, an archaeologist unearths a skeleton that turns out to be far more contemporary than the Roman remains she is seeking. Detective Superintendent Alan Banks and his team are called in to investigate, but there is little to be gleaned from the remains themselves. As the two cases unfurl, the investigations twist and turn to an explosive conclusion.

by Peter Robinson - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

When property developer Connor Clive Blaydon is found dead, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks and his Yorkshire team dive into the investigation. As luck would have it, someone had installed a cache of spy-cams all around his luxurious home. They hope that they’ll find answers --- and the culprit --- among the video recordings. However, instead of discovering Connor’s murderer, the grainy and blurred footage reveals another crime: a brutal rape. If they can discover the woman’s identity, it could lead to more than justice for the victim; it could change everything the police think they know about Connor and why anyone would want him dead.

by Peter Robinson - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

In Eastvale, a young Middle Eastern boy is found dead. Detective Superintendent Alan Banks and his team know they must tread carefully to solve this sensitive case. But tensions rise when they learn that the victim was stabbed somewhere else and dumped. Who is the boy, and where did he come from? Then, in a decayed area of Eastvale scheduled for redevelopment, a heroin addict is found dead. Was this just another tragic overdose or something darker? Just when he needs to be his sharpest, the seasoned detective finds himself distracted by a close friend’s increasingly precarious situation. He needs a break --- and gets one when he finds a connection to a real estate developer that could be key to finding the truth.

by Peter Robinson - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

Two suspicious deaths challenge Detective Superintendent Alan Banks and his crack investigative team. A young local student’s body is found in an abandoned car on a lonely country road. The death looks like suicide, but there are too many open questions for Banks and his team to rule out foul play. Meanwhile, a man in his 60s is found dead in a gully up on the wild moorland. Post mortem findings indicate that he died from injuries sustained during a fall. Was it an accident? Or was he pushed? As the inconsistencies multiply and the mysteries surrounding these two cases proliferate, a source reveals a piece of information that shocks the team and impacts the investigations.

by Peter Robinson - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

At the doors of a charming country church, an unspeakable act destroys a wedding party. A huge manhunt ensues. The culprit is captured. The story is over. Except it isn't. For Alan Banks, still struggling with a tragic loss of his own, there's something wrong about this case --- something unresolved. Reteaming with profiler Jenny Fuller, the relentless detective dives deeper into the crime...deep enough to unearth long-buried secrets that reshape everything Banks thought he knew about the events outside that chapel. And when at last the shocking truth becomes clear, it's almost too late.

by Peter Robinson - Fiction, Mystery, Short Stories, Suspense, Thriller

NOT SAFE AFTER DARK is a collection of 20 stories that explores the darkest edges of humanity in which everyday people must commit desperate acts as they face fear, temptation and impulses too irresistible to control. In “Going Back,” Inspector Banks’ trip to celebrate his parents’ Golden Anniversary reveals how evil can wear many disguises. In the Edgar Award-winning “Missing in Action,” the disappearance of a young boy in the early days of WWII sparks a mob mentality with chilling results. “Innocence” captures the desperate plight of a man trapped by a set of coincidences that derail his life and lead him down a path he was destined to travel. The title story is an exhilarating tale with a sudden conclusion that will leave readers’ hearts pounding.

by Peter Robinson - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

With Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot investigating a young woman’s death, newly promoted Detective Superintendent Banks finds himself taking on the coldest of cases: a fifty-year-old assault allegedly per-petrated by beloved celebrity Danny Caxton. Now Caxton stands accused at the center of a media storm, and it’s Banks’s job to discover the shocking truth. As more women step forward with accounts of Caxton’s manipulation, Banks must piece together decades-old evidence --- while the investigation leads him down the darkest of paths…

by Peter Robinson - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

Two young men have vanished, and the investigation leads to two troubling clues in two different locations --- a scorched van and a peculiar bloodstain in an abandoned airport hangar. As Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks and his team scramble for answers, the inquiry takes an even darker turn when a truck careens off an icy road in a freak hailstorm. In the wreckage, rescuers find the driver, who was killed on impact, as well as another body --- a body that was dead well before the crash.

by Peter Robinson - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

Sarah Broughton, the star of a hit cop show on TV, has put her dark past behind her…as well as her old name, Sally Bolton. When Sarah begins receiving letters mysteriously signed with the letter “M,” she thinks they’re from a harmless admirer…until her real name appears in the third letter. And then she finds that name inscribed in the sand near her home --- next to a body. The message is clear: Someone is watching Sarah’s every move. Someone so obsessed with her that he won’t stop at just one murder in order to prove his love.

by Peter Robinson - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

The body of a disgraced college lecturer is found on an abandoned railway line. In the four years since his dismissal for sexual misconduct, he'd been living like a hermit. So where did he get the 5,000 pounds found in his pocket? Leading the investigation, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks begins to suspect that the victim's past may be connected to his death.

by Peter Robinson - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks and his colleague DI Annie Cabbot become entangled in a complex case involving corruption, a dead cop, and a missing girl that leads them across the Channel and down a dark trail to find the truth.

by Peter Robinson - Fiction, Mystery

Chris always promised his wife they’d return to the Yorkshire Dales one day. Now a grieving widower, he keeps his promise to his wife and rents an isolated house in the Dales. But then he finds out that the house was the scene of a legendary murder in the 1950s.

by Peter Robinson - Fiction, Mystery
Television producer Laurie Moran and her fiancée, Alex Buckley, the former host of her investigative television show, are just days away from their mid-August wedding, when things take a dark turn. Alex’s seven-year-old nephew, Johnny, vanishes from the beach. A search party begins and witnesses recall Johnny playing in the water and collecting shells behind the beach shack, but no one remembers seeing him after the morning. As the sun sets, Johnny’s skim board washes up to shore, and everyone realizes that he could be anywhere, even under water. A ticking clock, a sinister stalker, and fresh romance combine in this exhilarating follow up to the bestselling YOU DON’T OWN ME.
by Peter Robinson - Fiction, Mystery

While investigating the hit-and-run death of a young boy, Seattle homicide detective Tracy Crosswhite makes a startling discovery: the suspect is an active-duty serviceman at a local naval base. After a key piece of case evidence goes missing, he is cleared of charges in a military court. But Tracy knows she can’t turn her back on this kind of injustice. When she uncovers the driver’s ties to a rash of recent heroin overdoses in the city, she realizes that this isn’t just a case of the military protecting its own. It runs much deeper than that, and the accused wasn’t acting alone. As Tracy moves closer to uncovering the truth behind this insidious conspiracy, she’s putting herself in harm’s way. And the only people she can rely on to make it out alive might be those she can no longer trust.