Works by
Peter Robinson
(Fiction Writer)
[1950 - ]

Alan Banks Series

1. Gallows View (1987)
   Former London policeman Alan Banks relocated to Yorkshire seeking some small measuer of peace. But depravity and violence are unfortunately not unique to large cities. His new venue, the quaint little village of Eastvale, seems to have more than its fair share of malefactors--among them a brazen Peeping Tom who hides in night's shadows spying on attractrive, unsuspecting ladies as they prepare for bed. And when an elderly woman is found brutally slain in her home, Chief Inspector Banks wonders if the voyeur has increased the awful intensity of his criminal activities. But whether relatied or not, perverse local acts and murderous ones are combining to profoundly touch Banks's suddenly vulnerable perosonal life, forcing a dedicated law officer to make hard choices he'd dearly hoped would never be necessary.

2. A Dedicated Man (1988)
   A dedicated man is dead in the Yorkshire dales -- a former university professor, wealthy historian and archaeologist who loved his adopted village. It is a particularly heinous slaying, considering the esteem in which the victim, Harry Steadman, was held by his neighbors and colleagues -- by everyone, it seems, except the one person who bludgeoned the life out of the respected scholar and left him half-buried in a farmer's field.
   
   Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks left the violence of London behind for what he hoped would be the peaceful life of a country policeman. But the brutality of Steadman's murder only reinforces one ugly, indisputable truth: that evil can flourish in even the most bucolic of settings. There are dangerous secrets hidden in the history of this remote Yorkshire community that have already led to one death. And Banks will have to plumb a dark and shocking local past to find his way to a killer before yesterday's sins cause more blood to be shed.

3. A Necessary End (1989)
   A peaceful demonstration in the normally quiet town of Eastvale ended with fifty arrests -- and the brutal stabbing death of a young constable. But Chief Inspector Alan Banks fears there is worse violence in the offing. For CID Superintendent Richard "Dirty Dick" Burgess has arrived from London to take charge of the investigation, fueled by professional outrage and volatile, long-simmering hatreds.
   
   Almost immediately, Burgess descends with vengeful fury upon the members of a sixties-style commune -- while Banks sifts through the rich Yorkshire soil around him, turning over the earthy, unsettling secrets of seemingly placid local lives. Crossing "Dirty Dick" could cost the Chief Inspector his career. But the killing of a flawed Eastvale policeman is not the only murder that needs to be solved here. And if Banks doesn't unmask the true assassin, his superior's misguided obsession might well result in further bloodshed.

4. Hanging Valley (1989)
   No one dreamed something so hideous could grow in so beautiful a place ...
   
   Many who visit the valley are overwhelmed by its majesty. Some wish they never had to leave. One didn't: a hiker whose decomposing corpse is discovered by an unsuspecting tourist. But this strange, incomprehensible murder is only the edge of the darkness that hovers over a small rural village and its tight-lipped residents, who guard shattering secrets of sordid pasts and private shames. Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks knows that both the grim truth and a cold-blooded killer are hiding here, far from the city, the noise, and safety. And he's determined to walk into the valley of death to expose them both.

5. Past Reason Hated (1991)
   A picturesque Yorkshire village is dressed in its finest for the upcoming Noel. But one of its residents will not be celebrating this holiday.
   
   Chief Inspector Alan Banks knows that secrecy can sometimes prove fatal'and secrets were the driving force behind Caroline Hartley's life…and death. She was a beautiful enigma, brutally stabbed in her own home three days prior to Christmas. Leaving her past behind for a forbidden love affair, she mystified more than a few. And now she is dead, clothed only in her unshared mysteries and her blood. In this season of giving and forgiving, Banks is eager to absolve the innocent of their sins. But that must wait until the many facets of a perplexing puzzle are exposed and the dark circle of his investigation finally closes…and when a killer makes the next move.

6. Wednesday's Child (1992)
   Wednesday's child is full of woe ...
   
   It was a crime of staggering inhumanity: a seven-year-old girl taken from her home right in front of her desperate working-class mother. With each passing moment, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks realizes that the child's death becomes more and more likely. But there are worse fates than death in a nightmare world of human monsters and their twisted games. And the grisly discovery of a young man slain in a particularly savage fashion only starts the clock ticking faster, drawing Banks into the sordid depths of an evil more terrible and terrifying than anything he has ever encountered.

7. Dry Bones That Dream (1994)
   There's more than blood and bone beneath the skin ...
   
   The victim, a nondescript "numbers cruncher," died horribly just yards away from his terrified wife and daughter, murdered by men who clearly enjoyed their work. The crime scene is one that could chill the blood of even the most seasoned police officer. But the strange revelations about an ordinary accountant's extraordinary secret life are what truly set Chief Inspector Alan Banks off -- as lies breed further deceptions and blood begets blood, unleashing a policeman's dark passions ... and a violent rage that, when freed, might be impossible to control.
   
   Also known as Final Account.

8. Innocent Graves (1996)
   The worst that can possibly happen . . . has.
   
   A beautiful child is dead—defiled and murdered in a lonely graveyard on a fog-shrouded evening. It is the sort of horrific crime Chief Inspector Alan Banks fled the city to escape. But the slaying of a bright and lovely teenager from a wealthy, respected family is not the end of a nightmare. Lies, dark secrets, unholy accusations, and hints of sexual depravity swirl around this abomination like leaves in an autumn wind, leading to a shattering travesty of justice that will brutally divide a devastated community with suspicion and hatred. But Banks must remain vigilant in his hunt—because when the devil is left free to pursue his terrible calling, more blood will surely flow.

9. Dead Right (1997)
   Hatred and murder breed in dark places ...
   
   In the long shadows of an alley a young man is murdered, savagely kicked and beaten to death by assailant or assailants unknown. It is a crime shocking in its raw brutality, and its shattering repercussions will be felt throughout a small provincial community on the edge -- because the victim was far from innocent, a youth whose sordid secret life was a tangle of terrifying contradictions and virulent racial hatred. And now a dedicated policeman beset by his own tormenting demons must follow the leads into the rankest pits of man's inhumanity to man -- to catch a killer before his village explodes.
   
   Also known as Blood at the Root.

10. In a Dry Season (1999)
    In the blistering, dry summer, the waters of Thornfield Reservior have been depleted, revealing the ruins of the small Yorkshire village that lay at its bottom, bringing with it the unidentified bones of a brutally murdered young woman. Detective Chief Inspector Banks faces a daunting challenge: he must unmask a killer who has escaped detection for half a century. Because the dark secret of Hobb's End continue to haunt the dedicated policeman even though the town that bred then has died—and long after its former residents have been scattered to far places . . . or themselves to the grave.
    
    From an acknowledged master writing at the peak of his storytelling powers comes a powerful, insightful, evocative, and searingly suspenseful novel of past crimes and present evil.

11. Cold Is the Grave (2000)
    The nude photo of a teenage runaway shows up on a pornographic website, and the girl's father turns to Detective Chief Inspector Alan banks for help. But these are typical circumstances, for the runaway is the daughter of a man who's determined to destroy the dedicated Yorkshire policeman's career and good name. Still it is a case that strikes painfully home, one that Banks—a father himself—dares not ignore as he follows it's squalid trail into teeming London, and into a world of drugs, sex, and crime. But murder follows soon after—gruesome ,sensational, and, more than once—pulling Banks in a direction that he dearly does not wish to go: into the past and private world of his most powerful enemy, Chief Constable Jimmy Riddle.

12. Aftermath (2001)
    The crime scene awaiting Acting Detective Superintendent Alan Banks is among the worst he has ever encountered. The assailant, Terence Payne, hovers close to death himself. And Payne's brutalized wife, Lucy -- whose overheard screams prompted the original call -- has already been moved to a local hospital for treatment. But these sins and tragedies pale before what else has transpired in a dank basement the press will soon dub the "House of Payne." Now that the fiend is in custody, the long nightmare appears over at last.
    
    But is it? In Alan Banks's mind too many questions need to be answered before he can rest easy. How could the heinous crimes of a popular teacher like Payne have so completely escaped the notice of his peers, his neighbors...his wife? And was fragile, abused Lucy Payne a victim or a reluctant accomplice?
    
    Despite the strain on his own personal life and relationships, Banks refuses to ease up on his investigation. Buried deep in the past are shards of irony, pity, and horror almost too painful to bear, and unspeakable betrayals that deformed more than one childhood. For Banks, for his lover, Annie Cabot -- who suspects heartless political forces are setting her up to destroy a life -- and for the beautiful consulting psychologist Dr. Jenny Fuller, there is much more that must be unearthed in the aftermath of abomination. Because the darkness has not yet lifted, and new casualties are mounting. And there are still monsters loose in the world...

13. The Summer That Never Was (2003)
    Detective Inspector Alan Banks has never forgiven himself for having possibly caused the disappearance and presumed death of his best friend back in the summer of 1965, a pivotal time when both boys stood on the precipice of manhood.
    
    When the tragic bones are shockingly unearthed and identified near Banks's childhood home more than 35 years later, the imagined skeleton in the detective's closet becomes all too real. Plummeted back into a past he thought he'd left behind, Banks is drawn into an investigation that hits dangerously close to home. 
    
    Also known as Close to Home.

14. Playing with Fire (2004)
    Fire. It violently destroys futures and pasts in a terrified heartbeat, devouring damning secrets while leaving even greater mysteries in its foul wake of ash and debris.
    
    The night sky is ablaze as fire engulfs two barges moored end to end on a Yorkshire canal. On board are the blackened remains of two human beings. One was a reclusive and eccentric local artist, the other a junkie, a sad and damaged young girl.
    
    To the seasoned eye of Inspector Alan Banks, this horror was no accident, its method so cruel and calculated that only the worst sort of fiend could have committed the dark act. And it isn't long before the fears of Banks and D.I. Annie Cabbot are brutally confirmed, when another suspicious blaze incinerates a remote trailer in the countryside . . . and another solitary life is gruesomely consumed.
    
    But is it the work of a serial arsonist, or an ingeniously conceived plot to obliterate the trail to other heinous crimes? There are shocking secrets to be uncovered in the charred wreckage, grim evidence of lethal greed and twisted hunger, and of nightmare occurrences within the private confines of family. A terrible suspicion that a killer's work is not yet done drives Alan Banks as the hunt intensifies for an elusive, cold-blooded chameleon who could be anyone and anywhere.
    
    In Playing with Fire, award-winning, internationally bestselling author Peter Robinson delivers a modern masterwork of suspense that confirms his standing as one of the brightest literary lights in crime fiction -- a blistering tale of murder and betrayal that is as frightening, devastating, and hypnotic as flame itself.

15. Strange Affair (2005)
    A bullet to the brain abruptly halted a terrified young woman's desperate flight. In her pocket is the name of a policeman whose own life was brutally invaded, mercilessly shaken, and very nearly erased -- a policeman who has since gone missing.
    
    The dead woman in the car had been running from something -- but she didn't run far or fast enough. Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot would like to question the man the victim was apparently racing to meet: Annie's superior -- and former lover -- Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks. But Banks has vanished into the anonymous chaos of the city, drawn into a mad whirl of greed, inhumanity, and death, by a frantic phone call from the brother he no longer knows. Banks is unaware that the threads connecting a sinister kidnapping with a savage slaying are as thick as rope . . . and long enough for a haunted and broken rogue cop to hang himself.

16. Piece of My Heart (2006)
    As volunteers clean up after a huge outdoor rock concert in Yorkshire in 1969, they discover the body of a young woman wrapped in a sleeping bag. She has been brutally murdered. The detective assigned to the case, Stanley Chadwick, is a hard-headed, strait-laced veteran of the Second World War. He could not have less in common with—or less regard for—young, disrespectful, long-haired hippies, smoking marijuana and listening to the pulsing sounds of rock and roll. But he has a murder to solve, and it looks as if the victim was somehow associated with the up-and-coming psychedelic pastoral band the Mad Hatters.
    
    In the present, Inspector Alan Banks is investigating the murder of a freelance music journalist who was working on a feature about the Mad Hatters for MOJO magazine. This is not the first time that the Mad Hatters, now aging rock superstars, have been brushed by tragedy. Banks finds he has to delve into the past to find out exactly what hornets' nest the journalist inadvertently stirred up.

17. Friend of the Devil (2007)
    On a cliff edge overlooking the North Sea, a quadriplegic woman in a wheelchair stares unseeingly at the waves. She had been murdered. And, miles away, in a storeroom in the Maze, a medieval warren of yards and alleys at the heart of Eastvale, Yorkshire, a young woman lies sprawled on a heap of leather scraps. She too has been murdered. Their bodies are discovered at about the same time that DI Annie Cabbot, on secondment to the Eastern Area force, wakes with a severe hangover in the bed of a young man she barely recognizes. From these three strands, Peter Robinson weaves his latest complex and compelling story.
    
    While DCI Alan Banks tries to figure out how anyone was able to murder Hayley Daniels, when the closed-circuit cameras trained on the entrances to the Maze show that no one preceded or followed her into its shadows, Cabbot learns two things that make her blood run cold: the real intentions of her one-night stand and the true identity of the quadriplegic woman. A ghost from the past is back to haunt both her and Banks.

Other

• Caedmon's Song (1990)

• No Cure for Love (1995)

Short Stories

• Not Safe After Dark: And Other Short Stories (1998)