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Skuggor På Vattnet : Och Elva Andra Berättelser (2011)

by Peter Robinson(Favorite Author)

3.68 of 5 Votes: 3

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Minotaur

review 1: Bit of a mixed bag, really. The final story was interesting in 'filling in' the missing pieces of Banks' London years, but, otherwise...Without having visited Canada, I don't really get a feel for the stories set in Toronto.The "Christmas Banks" was a bit lame, to be honest, and I wonder how many of these stories would have been written if editors who knew him hadn't commissioned them...I almost gave this 2 stars.
review 2: Peter Robinson is truly a man of the world. Born in Yorkshire, England, Robinson studied at Leeds University where he got an Honours degree in English Literature."So, if home is where the heart is then my heart never left Yorkshire," he says.Robinson left England for Canada to complete an MA in English and Creative Writing at the University ... moreof Windsor and later a PhD in English at York University.As plans go, his changed at a whim in those days and Robinson found himself staying on in Canada, teaching at a number of Toronto community colleges and universities over the years.Then he married and never really felt the inclination to move back to England permanently. Now, he says, he does not really know where home is. While his heart remains in Yorkshire, "Canada is far more permanent, and Toronto is very much home". He and his Canadian wife divide their time between England and Canada - spending about four months of a year in England and the rest in Canada and travelling.Like many writers, Robinson had a passion for writing from a young age - even before he started school. His initial foray into creative writing, however, was poetry. He started writing poetry at the age of 16 and continued until his mid-30s. Being an avid reader of crime novels, one day he had the idea to try his hand at writing a crime novel. "I read a lot of detective novels as a young boy," he says. "Then I started reading them again as an adult. "So it was a natural progression to write a detective novel."He started his first novel in the early 80s, and the rest, as they say, is history.Robinson's first novel, Gallows View, introduced Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks, the man who has grown with Robinson in his writing and who features as his main character in his crime novels. Robinson has since written 22 novels, 19 of which feature Banks, and his books have been translated into 19 languages.Banks is an Everyman, according to Robinson. He is no all-hero Sherlock Holmes, because while he usually gets his guy, he is also fallible and very human. He is also a bit of an enigma.Caedmon's Song, Robinson says, was the "first departure from the Banks series". There have been a few since, but Banks remains Robinson's signature character.Robinson has also published many short stories, and The Price of Love is his latest collection.Interestingly, this collection includes a Banks novella, Like a Virgin, that takes us back to Banks's life before Robinson introduces him in his first novel. So for the first time we get to know the man before the first novel.In the 20-odd years that Robinson has been writing crime fiction he has won numerous awards and been recognised in many literary circles. It's an illustrious career and Robinson loves his job.He is passionate about characterisation, human relationships, a sense of place and atmosphere. The suspense and mystery in the story is important to keep his reader hooked until the end. The realist in him also admits that the soap opera element in crime novels are the ultimate hook. For him, plot is not everything and he is not really interested in the whodunnit aspect. Today's readers are interested in the main character's love life and their everyday travails and Robinson is at pains to deliver this.He also admits that the social and political climate of the time in England and the rest of the world has a great bearing on the themes of his works."It's happening quite a lot more in my recent books."According to him, his first books, which were written in the late Thatcher period, reflected that time in that there was a great deal of anger in the novels. "But it was a naive kind of anger."Now international politics seem to play a bigger role in everyday life. "It is almost as if you ignore these issues at your peril," he observes.And like many other writers, Robinson uses the events and fallout around 9/11 to drive home this point.His last Banks novel deals with how the secret service operated, especially after 9/11. "The world we live in now is more security conscious and freedom is severely limited," he says."If I wrote fantasy, perhaps I could step away from the reality of the world we live in. But even then fantasy is based on reality to some extent."But Robinson is also aware that his main responsibility is to entertain, so the soap opera element and the suspense are always paramount."But my way of doing it would be to dig below the surface of things, whether it's the individual human psyche or whether it is society. "I think readers like that. I like to do things that make people think, but I also think that's entertainment too." less

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