Playing With Fire by Peter Robinson

Review by The Mole

Two narrow boats catch fire and the police are left with trying to determine if it's arson or accident. And if it's arson which of the two victims was the intended. And who are the victims anyway. It starts to look more like arson when a second fire destroys a caravan with a third victim inside. Banks and his team have their work cut out.

An admission before I start off... This is the first DCI Banks I have read and I have watched NONE of the TV dramatisations either. There, got that off my chest.

These books have a very popular following and I witnessed this at a Waterstones Nottingham event. It was well attended and the questions that people asked showed that they knew the characters well and considered them personal friends. Well having read my first one I can really understand why. The characters have their foibles and while you may not like everything about any of them then they also have their redeeming features. I am not a 'whodunnit' reader but I have to admit to having 'twigged' this one early on but Robinson had said that he didn't know who the culprit was until the end, so I am left wondering a bit how I got it so early.

If you haven't read any then I recommend crime readers give a DCI Banks novel a go.

Publisher - Pan Books
Genre - Adult Crime Fiction

Buy Playing with Fire from Amazon

Peter Robinson - Author event

While the buzz to be found at literary festivals such as Hay or Edinburgh is something special, don't forget that authors are always working away promoting their books and often coming to a town near you. Last Friday, Peter Robinson was at Waterstones in Nottingham to talk about his latest Inspector Banks novel, Watching The Dark.

Now, I must admit that although I'd seen them around in shops and the library, before the TV adaptation I hadn't paid much attention to this series, so I've been doing a little catching up. I'm not sure that reading the originals to the TV episodes was a good idea. Bits were changed round and cut for TV- if only British TV would give over 20 hours to a crime story the way they did with The Killing, as Peter himself said.

Peter read a couple of sections from his new novel - enough to whet our appetite without giving away the story-line - and then went on to answer questions from the audience. Prompted by these he talked about his route to publication (easier than expected), disagreements with his editor, his relationship with and input to the TV series (preferring to view it as a separate entity rather than an adaptation). People were concerned about the emotional and physical well-being of some of their favourite characters as left at the end of the last book and even wondered if he'd considered killing Inspector Banks off!

 



You can read more about Inspector Banks and Peter Robinson's work in general on the official site.