It’s called Bad Boy, and it’ll be due out on 5 August in the UK, late August in the US, and 14 September in Canada. Peter will be touring New Zealand and Australia from 16 August to 3 September, and will be at a number of events in Canada in late September and October.
We’ll have more about the book soon: a plot summary, cover, and tour dates for Peter.
Shooting has started on the first episodes of the new DCI Banks TV series. Starring Stephen Tompkinson, the series, with an initial pilot of two 60-minute episodes, is due to be premiered in Autumn 2010. For more about the series and the cast, here’s a press release with more details.
The first installment of this series is based on Peter’s Aftermath, and you might want to make sure you’ve read it before the series starts; or not. If you want to be surprised, and haven’t read the book, perhaps you’ll save the reading for after.
There seems to be a trend of new police shows in the UK. The Independent recently ran an article about several new shows, including the Banks series.
ITV, which will be presenting the Inspector Banks TV series, has issued a press release about the series.
“ITV today announced it has commissioned two-part pilot episode of DCI Banks: Aftermath, based on the hugely successful detective novel from award-winning international crime writer Peter Robinson.
Produced by Left Bank Pictures and starring Stephen Tompkinson as DCI Alan Banks, the two x 60 minute episodes will go into production in Yorkshire at the end of April 2010.”
No hints as to when the pilot will air, however. We probably won’t know that until after shooting has completed. We’ll let you know when we find out.
Peter was in Paris recently for the Paris Book Fair, and had many interviews with the French press. Here’s a video interview on France 24, France’s international news channel in English.
I met with Stephen Tompkinson to discuss the forthcoming Inspector Banks TV series in Florida last month. I don’t have a lot more news except that the director is to be James Hawes (Enid, The 39 Steps, several Merlin and Doctor Who episodes) and filming begins at the end of April. As soon as I have any word on who’s playing Annie, I’ll post it.
This year is shaping up to be a very busy one from August onwards, with the BAD BOY Tour kicking off in the UK, then Australia, New Zealand and Canada with hardly a chance of a break between countries. More details when I have them.
Before then I’ll be doing a couple of events in Ontario over the summer, including programming and introducing a night of chamber music in Ottawa on July 10 and performing at the Leacock Festival in Orillia on July 23. I’ll also be teaching a Crime Writing course at the University of Toronto from July 5 to 9.
There’s plenty of great new music to keep me going. Saw Kate Rusby at Hugh’s Room in Toronto last night, and she was terrific. New CDs stacked up include Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate, Amy Macdonald, Jimi Hendrix, Jesca Hoop, Joanna Newsom, Josh Rouse, the White Stripes, and string quartets by Haydn and Tchaikovsky.
First of all, let me thank all of you who sent sympathy over the “Other Peter Robinson” affair. It was all very annoying, but it seems to be over now. I suppose, to look on the bright side, at least I got some press out of it. Anyway, thank you all.
The big news right now is that Left Bank Productions and ITV are going to start filming Aftermath in April with Stephen Tompkinson as Alan Banks. He’s thrilled about the role and I’m thrilled to have him in the part. He’s an extremely popular actor in the UK – some of you may know him from Ballykissangel and Wild at Heart, and he was terrific in the movie Brassed Off.
With Left Bank and ITV involved, I would also expect the highest standards in production values. At the moment, I have no other details on casting (no more, “Who’s going to play Annie?” please. I don’t know yet.) or on where it’s going to filmed. I can only hope it’s somewhere in the Yorkshire Dales. Aftermath is only a pilot, so anything (or nothing) could happen, but with the screenplay I’ve read and Stephen Tompkinson in the lead, it has every chance of developing legs, as they say, so let’s hope for a long-running series to rival Morse, Frost and Midsomer Murders. The Daily Mirror printed the story here.
The new Banks novel Bad Boy is finished all but the printing and binding, and it should be out in the UK in early August 2010, and in North America a short while later. I will be touring in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Canada in August and September this year. I’ll post details when I have them. Bad Boy begins when a distraught woman arrives at the Eastvale police station desperate to speak to Banks. Since he is on holiday, Annie Cabbot, steps in. The woman tells Annie that she’s found a loaded gun hidden in the bedroom of her daughter, Erin, and when an armed response team goes to the house to retrieve the weapon, a straightforward procedure quickly spirals out of control. But this is ony the beginning. It turns out that Erin’s best friend and housemate is none other than Tracy Banks, who was last seen racing off to warn the owner of the gun, a very bad boy indeed. Thrust into a complicated and dangerous case intertwining the personal and the professional as never before, Annie and Banks – a bit of a bad boy himself – must risk everything to outsmart a smooth and devious psychopath. But this time it’s not just Banks’s career hanging in the balance, it’s also his daughter’s life.
The paperback edition of The Price of Love is coming out from Hodder in the UK on February 18. I don’t have details on US and Canadian publication yet, but I would guess at late spring or early summer. Even for those of you who don’t like short stories and have complained to me about the lack of a Banks novel in 2009 (Oh yes, people do, you know), it’s worth the price for the Banks novella, “Like a Virgin,” which details his last case in London before heading up to Yorkshire. Look at is as a slightly shorter than usual Banks novel!
I don’t have many events coming up in the near future, but I will be at Sleuthfest, in Florida, February 26-28 and at Bloody Words in Toronto, May 28 to 30. I will also be in Paris for the Salon du Livre on the weekend of March 27, and in Horsens, Denmark, for the annual crime festival on April 10. I may also be doing bookshop events in Paris and Copenhagen, so keep your eyes on your local stores. I also expect to be at the London Book Fair in April.
I don’t get the chance to answer every email and request I get, and for that I apologise. Some of you have asked for signed bookplates recently. As it happens, I don’t have any, but I will get some. You may have to wait a little while, so please be pateient. I also don’t have signed photographs – I’m not an actor or a rock star! – and they may be a little more difficult to come across. Honestly, this business used to be about writing books, really… Oh, and, finally, I’ll have the Bad Boy playlist up very soon. There’s a lot of interesting music on it for those of you who like that aspect of the books. For those who don’t, well, you don’t have to look at it!
Many thanks to all of you who have offered me your support in my time of difficulty – especially the person who said my wife was a homophobic slut who needed a good slapping around, and the other who suggested that I turn to Jesus Christ as my Saviour – but I must stress that I AM NOT Peter Robinson the politician, Norther Ireland’s First Minister.
I would have thought InspectorBanks.com would be the first clue, as would even the most cursory glance at the site, but I guess people who send rude and insulting emails or push religion at the vulnerable were not, alas, at the front of the queue when the brains were handed out.
Please, cease and desist!
The Richmond Books and Boots Festival seems a long time ago now, though it took place between 25th September and 4th October, 2009. Perhaps it took me that long to recover! Also, between then and now, I have been on a two-week visit to South Africa, with stops for book events and dinners with Exclusive Books managers in Johannesburg, Durban and Capetown, all organised by South African publishers and distributors Jonathan Ball. And I have to say, they did us proud. It was first class treatment all the way, all handled smoothly and professionally by publicist Anika Ebrahim, who may not drink, but certainly knows a lot about which wines to order!
Among the highlights were “Fright Night” with Jenny Crwys-Williams at The Venue, Melrose Arch, Johannesburg; a launch at the Exclusive Books, at the Pavilion Mall, Durban; a dinner hosted by Jonathan Ball and his wife Pam at the Constantia Uitsig restaurant, outside Cape Town, where I had a long and interesting talk with local crime writer Margie Orford; and the Cape Times Literary Lunch at the wonderful Catharina’s rsetaurant on the Steenberg Estate, with Gorry Bowes-Taylor. Among the culinary delights of the trip were langoustines, warthog carpacccio, kudu and Namibian oysters. The wines were too wonderful and too numerous to list, but on a day spent visiting wineries around Stellenbosch and Franschhoek with Anika, Serai and our expert Meryke, we took in Meerlust, Tokara, Glen Carlou and Kanonkop, with lunch at the beautiful Haute Carbriere restaurant, with spectacular views over the valley near Franschhoek pass. Perhaps the highlight of the trip, though, was a three-day visit to the Mala Mala game reserve, adjacent to the Kruger National Park, where we saw lions, leopards, elephants, giraffes, buffalo, rhinos, zebra and many more animals close up in their natural habitats, and witnessed one or two examples of nature red in tooth and claw that I won’t forget in a hurry.
The Yorkshire summer wasn’t much better than last year’s, though there seemed enough fine days to go walking around Richmond, and the weather during the official “Inspector Banks” walk I led from Reeth during the festival couldn’t have been more lovely. I think the twenty or so people who walked with me had a good time, and there was, of course, a well-deserved pint of Jennings’ Sneck Lifter at the end, in The Bridge, at Grinton.
The festival events certainly kept me busy, and most of them were sold out well in advance. A few days before the walk, I interviewed Baroness Rendell of Babergh, better known to crime fans as Ruth Rendell, on stage at the Zetland Centre, Richmond. What was supposed to be about forty minutes plus Q and A turned into about sevently minutes plus a short Q and A, and we covered a range of topics, from her early work, through Barbara Vine, Wexford and non-Wexford, TV adaptations, Chabrol’s and Almodovar’s movie versions, to what Baroness Rendell has on her iPod.
Ruth Rendell with Peter Robinson.
A week or so later, I had an on-stage conversation with Ian Rankin at the same venue, against the backdrop for “Home on the Range,” Nobby Dimon’s excellent play about women from North Yorkshire on the Oregon Trail, which opened at the festival. For Ian and I, it was a reprise of similar events we’d done before in Harrogate and Toronto, and the conversation took in Rebus and beyond, Banks, music, movies, Yorkshire, Scotland, Canada and many other topics, again running longer than the allotted forty minutes. I just hope the audience enjoyed it as much as Ian and I did.
Peter chatting with Ian Rankin.
Finally, I had a musical event with the incomparable (or as Paul Morley called her that day in The Observer, “glamorously feisty”) Eliza Carthy, this time in the ballroom at the Kings Head Hotel in Richmond market square, the very same room where Franz Liszt performed a concert on 27th January, 1841. We did the same story we had done earlier in the year at the Beverley Folk Festival, “The Ferryman’s Beautiful Daughter.” Of course, the nuances turned out quite differently, as I think I was a little more responsive to the music, and Eliza was quite capricious this time.
Peter and Eliza Carthy.
After the story, we chatted on stage for a while, then Eliza performed a few songs, accompanying herself on violin, always the highlight of our events for me. One of the songs she sang was “I Wish That The Wars Were All Over,” definitely one of my favourites. At the end of the evening we adjourned to the hotel bar along with a few others and drank wine well into the night. I must thank Gilian Howells, for all her hard work in making the festival such a success. I’m already looking forward to next year!
If you’re in Europe, you may have heard of Spotify, an ad-supported application that lets you listen to music for free. While only a limited number of labels and artists are currently available on Spotify, there are enough that Swedish Inspector Banks fan Johan Ahlénius was able to whip up four Inspector Banks playlists on Spotify.
If you have Spotify, you can click the above links to open the playlists with the program; if not, you’ll be prompted to download and install the program (if you live in a country where the service is available).
We’ll be posting these links to the individual books’ playlist pages, and if Johan sends in more, we’ll add them too. Thanks Johan!
It’s time to hit the road again. On Sunday, September 13th, I’ll be interviewed on stage by Patrick Lennon at the Reading Crime Festival. The event takes place at 7pm at Victoria Hall in Reading town centre. Later that week, I have two events with Sophie Hannah in the London area. The first is on Thursday, September 17th, 7.30pm at the Gerards Cross Bookshop, 12a Packhorse Road, Gerards Cross, Bucks. The second is the SW11 Festival, in Clapham, on Friday, September 18th, 7pm Waterstone’s, 70 St John’s Road, London SW11.
After that comes the Richmond Walking and Books Festival, where I will be interviewing Ruth Rendell, chatting on stage with Ian Rankin, leading a walk in Swaledale and doing a short story/music event with Eliza Carthy in a hall where Franz Liszt once played a recital. Details at http://www.booksandboots.org/.
On October 9th I’m doing an event for Lichefield Library with Sophie Hannah, at The Friary, Lichfield Staffordshire at 6.00pm.
On Monday, October 12th, Sophie and I are at the Ilkley Festival event at the Ilkley Playhouse Wharfeside, Weston Road, Ilkley, West Yorkshire.
After that, a book tour of South Africa. Detals to follow…..
And don’t forget: the U.S. edition of The Price of Love is published on September 29th.
-Peter
Peter Robinson 