The Crime Writers of Canada sponsors annual Awards of Excellence. There are ten categories, the most prestigious of which is the $1,000 prize for Best Crime Novel. Hyacinthe Miller, the Chair of the CWC, announced, on 18 May, 2023, that starting in 2024, and for 5 years the, award would be renamed the Peter Robinson Award for Best Crime Novel, sponsored by Rakuten Kobo.

On Thursday 18 May 2023, CWC Chair Hyacinthe Miller presented Peter Robinson’s widow, Sheila Halliday, with a picture of the future Peter Robinson Award for Best Crime Fiction sponsored by Rakuten Kobo for $1000. The renaming of the award was announced at the Celebration of life held at the Balmy Beach Club in Toronto. The response to the renaming was enthusiastic. “It was quite emotional,” said Hyacinthe.

Last year the crime writing world lost one of its very finest: Peter Robinson, author of the bestselling Inspector Banks series. In this special online event, three leading crime writers – Michael Connelly, Louise Penny and Ian Rankin – will pay tribute to Peter’s life and body of work, which spanned over three decades.

The event will be available to view, free of charge, from Thursday 8th June, to mark the publication day of the twenty-eighth and final book in the Banks series, Standing in the Shadows.

This is a free, online event. To attend, visit the Harrogate Festival website.

Crime writer and University of Leeds alumnus Peter Robinson died after a short illness last year. The Leeds-born novelist was well known as the author of the best-selling DCI Banks novels.

Crime writer and Leeds alumnus Peter Robinson died after a short illness last year. The Leeds-born novelist was well known as the author of the best-selling DCI Banks novel.

As the final installment in the DCI Banks series is published, we will be celebrating Peter’s work in a special event. You will hear from crime writers, academics, and students on the mastery of Peter’s work and his connection to the University, and have the chance to delve into Peter’s literary archive, housed in the University’s Brotherton Library.

You can attend the event in person, or online. For more information, visit the Leeds University School of English website.

Peter’s wife, Shelia Halladay, was interviewed by CrimeReads, where she told a bit about how he worked.

“Peter was a very disciplined and committed writer and he always met his deadlines. Once Peter started on a manuscript, he was pretty steady. While he was flexible and didn’t commit to a strict schedule, he would generally concentrate on writing for three to four hours in the morning. I was very lucky that he did not wake up in the middle of the night to frantically write. He would tease that if the writing was going well in the morning, he would go back to it in the afternoon and if it was not going well, he would go to the pub.

“As Peter was heading towards writing the conclusion of the book, his pace of writing would pick up. Because he did not plot out the books in advance, he had to keep all of the strands of the main plot, secondary stories etc. in his head. It was a like giant puzzle that he had to put together. The actual murderer was not particularly important to Peter and he would usually be over half way through the manuscript when he would announce that he knew ‘who did it’. He always found it amusing when people would tell him the page when they knew who the murderer was, and he would tell them that he didn’t know until much later.”

Read the entire interview on CrimeReads.

A celebration of Peter Robinson’s life, as well as a Canadian book launch for Standing in the Shadows, will be held on May 18 in Toronto.

The final Inspector Banks novel, Standing in the Shadows, will be released on April 11, 2023 in the US, on May 16, 2023 in Canada, and on June 8, 2023, in the UK.

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 Mark Woodley 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. Left with few clues, Banks and his team must rely on their wits to hunt down a killer.

As the two cases unfurl, the investigations twist and turn to an explosive conclusion.

Read more about Standing in the Shadows.