Peter Robinson Books In Order – Complete List

Bestselling author Peter Robinson is popular for his Inspector Banks series, which currently includes 28 books, with the last novel published in 2023 titled Standing in the Shadows.

Peter Robinson passed away in October 2022.

Here are the Peter Robinson Inspector Banks books in order of publication (the reading order is the same as the publication order). The series is set in the fictional English town called Eastvale. Generally, Peter Robinson’s books and short story collections are more or less related to the Inspector Banks.

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Peter Robinson’s Inspector Banks Books in Publication Order

1. Gallows View , 1987
2. A Dedicated Man, 1988
3. A Necessary End, 1989
4. The Hanging Valley, 1989
5. Past Reason Hated, 1991
6. Wednesday’s Child, 1992
7. Dry Bones That Dream, 1994
8. Innocent Graves , 1996
9. Dead Right aka Blood at the Root, 1997
10. In A Dry Season, 1999
11. Cold is the Grave, 2000
12. Aftermath, 2001
13. The Summer That Never Was, 2003
14. Playing With Fire, 2004
15. Strange Affair, 2005
16. Piece of My Heart, 2006
17. Friend of the Devil, 2007
18. All the Colours of Darkness, 2008
19. Bad Boy, 2010
20. Watching the Dark, 2012
21. Children of the Revolution, 2013
22. Abattoir Blues, 2014 (new publication title: In the Dark Places)
23. When the Music’s Over, 2016
24. Sleeping in the Ground, 2017
25. Careless Love, 2019
26. Many Rivers to Cross, 2019
27. Not Dark Yet, 2021
28. Standing in the Shadows, 2023

Short Stories and Novellas in Order of Publication

• Birthday Dance, 2009
• Blue Christmas, 2009
• The Cherub Affair, 2009
• Cornelius Jubb, 2009
• The Eastvale Ladies’ Poker Circle, 2009
• The Ferryman’s Beautiful Daughter, 2009
• Like a Virgin, 2009
• The Magic of Your Touch, 2009
• Shadows on the Water, 2009
• Walking the Dog, 2009
• Fan Mail, 2016 (short story)
• Innocence, 2016 (novella)
• The Good Partner, 2016 (novella)
• Seven Years, 2018 (novella in the Bibliomysteries books series)

Short Story Collections and Anthologies in Order of Publication

• Malice Domestic 6, 1997 (Malice Domestic series)
• First Cases 2: First Appearances of Classic Amateur Sleuths, 1997
• Blue Lightning, 1998 (edited by John Harvey)
• The Best American Mystery Stories 1998, 1998 (edited by Sue Grafton)
• Not Safe After Dark and Other Stories, 1998 (DCI Banks short stories)
• The Best American Mystery Stories 1999, 1999
• Opening Shots: Great Mystery and Crime Writers Share Their First Published Stories, 2000
• A Century of British Mystery and Suspense, 2000 (edited by Anne Perry)
• The Best American Mystery Stories 2001, 2001
• The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories: 2, 2001
• Love and Death, 2001
• The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories: Second Annual Collection, 2001
• The Mighty Johns, 2002 (with David Baldacci)
• Much Ado about Murder, 2002 (edited by Anne Perry)
• The Best British Mysteries IV, 2003
• Men from Boys, 2003 (edited by John Harvey)
• Like a Charm: A Novel in Voices, 2004 (edited by Karin Slaughter)
• The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories: Fifth Annual Collection, 2004
• Murder… and All That Jazz, 2004
• Thou Shalt Not Kill, 2005 (edited by Anne Perry)
• The Best New British Mysteries Volume II, 2005
• A Merry Band of Murderers, 2006
• Blood on the Holly, 2007
• The Penguin Book of Crime Stories, 2007
• Dead Man’s Hand: Crime Fiction At the Poker Table, 2007 (with Otto Penzler)
• The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries, 2008
• In the Shadow of the Master, 2008 (edited by Michael Connelly)
• The Blue Religion, 2008 (Mystery Writers of America Presents) (edited by Michael Connelly)
• Toronto Noir, 2007 (Akashik Noir)
• The Price Of Love and Other Stories, 2009 (includes three Inspector Banks short stories and a novella)
• Between the Dark and the Daylight, 2009
• The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 7, 2010
• Suspense Magazine, April 2010, 2010
• The Penguin Book of Crime Stories, Volume II, 2010
• Deadly Pleasures, 2013 (Crime Writer’s Association Anthology)
• The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries, 2013
• OxCrimes: 27 Killer Stories from the Cream of Crimewriters, 2014 (introduced by Ian Rankin)
• Crime Plus Music: Twenty Stories of Music-Themed Noir, 2016
• Deadly Anniversaries, 2020 (Mystery Writers of America Presents)
• The Wrong Hands, 2020
• Ink and Daggers, 2023 (edited by Maxim Jakubowski)

Standalone Novels in Publication Order

• Caedmon’s Song, 1990 (published as The First Cut in the US)
• No Cure for Love, 1995
• Before The Poison, 2011

Peter Robinson Biography – About the Author

Canadian-British author Peter Robinsons was born in Armley, Leeds, England in 1950. He grew up in Yorkshire, where his Inspector Banks series is also set. After getting his BA in English Literature at the University of Leeds, in 1974 he moved to Canada, where he got his master’s degree in English and Creative writing from the University of Windsor.

Next, he moved back to the UK but couldn’t find a teaching job, so he returned to Canada and got a Ph.D. in English at York University in Toronto. It was much easier to find jobs in Canada, so the author would go back and forth between the two countries until he eventually fully settled in Canada.

Before writing his Banks series, he wrote poems and published his own work. When, one summer, he went back to Yorkshire, he found his father reading a Raymond Chandler book. Next, he picked up many different British crime books by various authors and was hooked. He started writing as well, but the first three books were duds. Then he wrote A Dedicated Man (a book that became book #2 in the Inspector Banks series), and soon Penguin in Canada picked it up, along with the rest of the series.

Inspector Banks was born through Peter Robinson reading many crime novels set in England in the 1980s with detectives working cases at the police station. Thus, he figured that a new crime mystery series set in Yorkshire, where he grew up, would be enjoyable to British crime mystery readers.

When he started the series, the author was already living in Canada. However, he was still nostalgic for the UK of his past. He also knew his home country much better than his new uprooted country.

Several books in the Inspector Banks series take their plots from real-life crimes reported in newspapers but are incomplete in their storylines. The author takes the stories and through his creativity, takes the plots to new interesting directions.

In an interview, Peter Robinson mentioned that in order to write successful crime mystery novels, you need to have a morbid imagination that leaves no space for squeamishness.

The Price of Love, the collection of short stories, includes several about Inspector Banks. In addition, Not Safe After Dark is all about Inspector Alan Banks.

Besides writing his Inspector Banks series, standalone novels, and short stories, he was also occasionally teaching crime writing at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. The author lived in Toronto, Richmond, and North Yorkshire with his wife until October 2022 when he passed away.

Peter Robinson Awards and Nominations

Several of his Inspector Banks novels have been nominated for and won various crime fiction awards, including the Anthony Award, the Arthur Ellis Award, the TORGI Talking Book Award, the Macavity Award for Best Short Story, the Barry Award, the Swedish Martin Beck Award, Spoken Word Bronze Award, CWA (UK) Dagger in The Library Award, and have been nominated for the Agatha Award. The book In a Dry Season has been a New York Times Notable Book. The author was shortlisted for the John Creasey Award, among others. Here is the full list of awards won:

• Innocence – Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Story in 1990
• Innocence – Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Short Story in 1991
• Past Reason Hated – Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel in 1991
• Past Reason Hated – Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel in 1992
• Innocent Graves – Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel in 1997
• The Two Ladies of Rose Cottage – Macavity Award for Best Short Story in 1998
• In a Dry Season – Anthony Award for Best Novel in 2000
• In a Dry Season – Barry Award for Best Novel in 2000
• Missing in Action – Edgar Award for Best Short Story in 2000
• Cold is the Grave – Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel in 2001
• Murder in Utopia – Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Short Story in 2001
• Before the Poison – Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel in 2012
• Before the Poison – Martin Beck Award in 2012
• Sleeping in the Ground – Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel in 2018

TV Adaptations vs the Book Series

The ITV DCI Banks TV series includes 5 seasons. While the show follows the general plotlines and characters of the books, there are some differences between the two.

The books take place in the fictional Yorkshire town of Eastvale, while the TV show is set in the real town of Leeds. The show also features more modern technology, such as smartphones and computers, compared to the books.

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