Not Safe After Dark, and Other Stories

Book excerpt: Peter Robinson’s first collection of short crime fiction to be published in Canada spans his writing career and reveals his impeccable grasp of both mystery and suspense writing. The sixteen stories are set in places as far flung as Inspector Alan Banks’s turf in Yorkshire, Robinson’s own neighbourhood in Toronto, and in Los Angeles and Florida. They also reach back in time: to 1873 to an utopian milltown in northern England, to Thomas Hardy country in 1939, and to a small Yorkshire town during the Second World War. The collection also includes a novella, featuring Robinson’ s celebrated sleuth Inspector Banks. Going Home is a chilling yet profoundly moving tale of just how hard it can be to visit one’s elderly parents, even for only a few days. Four of the stories have won awards: ‘Innocence” won the Crime Writers of Canada Best Short Story Award in 1991, and “The Two Ladies of Rose Cottage” won the Mystery Readers International’s Macavity Award in 1998 and was nominated for both the Agatha and Arthur Ellis awards. “Murder in Utopia” won Robinson his fifth Arthur Ellis Award in 2001, the same year that “Missing in Action” won the Edgar Award.