Not Safe After Dark and Other Stories - Softcover

Robinson, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1885941293 ISBN 13: 9781885941299

Publisher: Crippen & Landru Pub, 1998

Synopsis

Not Safe after Dark contains all of Peter Robinson's short crime tales, including three stories about Inspector Banks, a private-eye story set in Florida, and other stories of crime and mystery. It is not surprising that the title story is an exercise in noir suspense, as is the modern classic "Innocence," which won Crime Writer of Canada's Best Short Story Award. This book also contains two crime/detective stories set in the past, including one written especially for this collection.

Whether he writes pure detective stories or heartbreakingly noir tales, Peter Robinson is a thoughtful writer who is one of the best plotters and stylists in the business.

About this title

Review:

Peter Robinson is an English-born Canadian mystery writer whose work has been popular on both sides of the Atlantic. His novels featuring Yorkshire policeman Alan Banks include Gallow's View, Wednesday's Child, Blood at the Root, and, most recently, In a Dry Season. Like many of the genre's most accomplished practitioners, he is also an excellent short story writer, and, thanks to the special mission of the small Norfolk, Virginia, publishing house, Crippen & Landru, nearly all of Robinson's story output to date has been collected in this splendidly readable, highly intelligent volume of 13 tales. Not Safe After Dark contains three Inspector Banks stories that, like the longer works featuring that character, are contemporary plots with that Golden Age feel so cherished by many readers. There is also Robinson's first private-eye story, "Some Land in Florida," and his first historically set tale, "The Two Ladies of Rose Cottage" (inspired, he says, by his interest in Thomas Hardy), which was good enough to be selected for the prestigious annual volume of The Best American Mystery Stories.

One of the features that most interested me about this collection is how comfortable Robinson is in the different settings he selects. Whether it's the British Midlands or the condo coasts of Florida, Peter Robinson is such a keen observer of human nature that he keeps readers satisfied wherever he takes them. It is worth noting that in "Some Land in Florida," his private investigator, Jack Erwin, is given to sitting under the palm trees, smoking a cigar, nursing a whiskey and reading Robertson Davies!

From the Inside Flap:

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 in 1873, 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 wasnominated 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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Crippen & Landru Pub
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1885941293
• ISBN 13: 9781885941299
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224