Robinson was awarded with a BA Honours Degree in English Literature at the University of Leeds. He then emigrated to Canada in 1974 and took his MA in English and Creative Writing at the University of Windsor, with Joyce Carol Oates as his tutor, then a PhD in English at York University in Toronto. He is best known for the Inspector Banks series of novels set in the fictional Yorkshire town of Eastvale, which have been translated into fifteen languages, but also writes short stories and other novels.

Inspector Banks series

His first novel, Gallows View (1987), introduced Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks. It was short-listed for the John Creasey Award in the UK and Crime Writers of Canada best first novel award. A Dedicated Man followed in 1988 and was short-listed for the CWC's Arthur Ellis Award for best novel. A Necessary End and The Hanging Valley, both Inspector Banks novels, followed in 1989, and the latter was nominated for an Arthur Ellis Award. Both received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly in the US.

The fifth Inspector Banks novel, Past Reason Hated, won the Arthur Ellis Awardt Novel in 1992. The sixth, Wednesday's Child, was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America. Dry Bones That Dream (US:Final Account) appeared in 1994 and won an Author's Award from the Foundation for the Advancement of Canadian Letters in 1995.

The eighth Inspector Banks novel, Innocent Graves (1996) was picked as one of Publishers Weekly's best mysteries of 1996 and selected as "page-turner of the week" by People magazine. Innocent Graves was also nominated for a Hammett Award for "literary excellence in the field of crime writing" by the International Association of Crime Writers, and won the author his second Arthur Ellis Award for best novel. In a Dry Season, the tenth in the series, won the Anthony and Barry awards for best novel and was nominated for the Edgar, Hammett, Macavity and Arthur Ellis Awards. In 2001, it also won France's Grand Prix de Littérature Policière and Sweden's Martin Beck Award. It was also a New York Times Notable Book of 1999. The next book, Cold is the Grave, won the Arthur Ellis Award and was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award.

In 2002, Robinson was awarded the "Dagger in the Library" by the Crime Writers' Association. The 12th novel Aftermath was a number one bestseller in the UK and Canada, and was later dramatised for ITV, under the title DCI Banks, and stars Stephen Tompkinson as Banks. The two-part episode was shown on 27 September and 4 October 2010.

The 13th novel, The Summer that Never Was, appeared on the New York Times expanded bestseller list in February 2003, and on both the UK and Canadian bestseller lists and was nominated for an Arthur Ellis and an Anthony award.

Other works

Caedmon's Song, Robinson's first novel not part of the Inspector Banks series, was published in 1990 and was also nominated for an Arthur. (It was reissued in the UK by Macmillan in September, 2003, and published for the first time in the US by Dark Passage in September, 2004, as The First Cut.)

Robinson has also published many short stories. "Innocence" won the CWC Best Short Story Award, [1991. "The Two Ladies of Rose Cottage," which appeared in Malice Domestic 6, edited by Anne Perry, in April 1997, won the Macavity Award and was nominated for both the Agatha and Arthur Ellis awards. His first collection of short stories, Not Safe After Dark and Other Stories, was published in 1998 by Crippen & Landru and in September 2004, in an expanded edition, by McClelland & Stewart in Canada and Macmillan in the UK. "Murder in Utopia" won Robinson his fifth Arthur Ellis Award in 2001, and the same year "Missing in Action" won the Edgar Award.

Born in Castleford, Yorkshire or Armley, Leeds,. He emigrated to Canada to continue his studies after completing his first degree at the University of Leeds.

Robinson lives in the Beaches area of Toronto with his wife, Sheila Halladay, and he occasionally teaches crime writing at the University of Toronto's School of Continuing Studies. He has taught at a number of Toronto colleges and served as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Windsor, 1992-93.

Iris Robinson scandal

In 2010, Robinson was notably mistaken for the First Minister of the Legislative Assembly of North Ireland (also called Peter Robinson) whose his wife ran away with a young man. Robinson received angry e-mails, saying his wife was "homophobic", and he quipped on his website under the title "I’m Not That Peter Robinson", "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".

Alan Banks Novels

• Gallows View (1987)
• A Dedicated Man (1988)
• A Necessary End (1989)
• The Hanging Valley (1989)
• Past Reason Hated (1991)
• Wednesday's Child (1992)
• Dry Bones That Dream (1994) (US title: Final Account)
• Innocent Graves (1996)
• Dead Right (1997) (US title: Blood at the Root)
• In A Dry Season (1999)
• Cold is the Grave (2000)
• Aftermath (2001)
• The Summer that Never Was (2003) (US title: Close to Home)
• Playing with Fire (2004)
• Strange Affair (2005)
• Piece of My Heart (2006)
• Friend of the Devil (2007) Shortlisted for Theakston’s Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year Award 2009.
• All The Colours Of Darkness (2008)
• Bad Boy (2010)

Other

• Caedmon's Song (1990) (US Title: The First Cut)
• No Cure for Love (1995)
• Not Safe After Dark (1998) (short stories) -- "expanded version" released in 2004
• And Other Stories (2009) (short stories)