Peter’s latest novel, Before the Poison will be released in hardcover in the US on February 7. This best-selling book looks at a crime that occurred more than 50 years ago.

Grace Fox poisoned her husband in January, 1953. Or did she? Though she was tried for murder and subsequently hanged, Grace remained a silent and enigmatic figure to the very end.

When Chris Lowe returns to his native Yorkshire to live in the isolated Kilnsgate House nearly sixty years later, in the wake of his wife’s untimely death, he wants only to be left alone to compose his piano sonata after years of soul-destroying, though lucrative, work writing film scores. Soon, however, as he learns the troubled history of Kilnsgate, he becomes fascinated by Grace’s story. The more he discovers about her life and her work as a Queen Alexandra’s nurse during the war, the more certain he becomes that she couldn’t have murdered her husband.

As Chris searches for other explanations of what might have happened on that snow-bound January night, through rumours of half-glimpsed figures, mysterious strangers and a missing letter, his quest to prove Grace’s innocence becomes entangled with his own need to sift through the ruins and loose ends of his own life in search of some kind of meaning and order, and his new relationship with local estate agent Heather Barlow.

Alternating between a contemporary account of Grace’s trial, her wartime journals of Dunkirk, Singapore and Normandy, and Chris’s quest for the truth, Before the Poison is a suspenseful exploration of guilt, self-sacrifice and redemption, moving inexorably towards a revelation that, when it is uncovered, will prove shattering and surprising both to Chris and to the reader.

Read an excerpt of the book here.

The RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People) published the name of the most borrowed author of 2011: Peter Robinson. It turns out that Peter’s Innocent Graves topped the list of the most borrowed audiobooks, and a total of 7 of Peter’s books were in the top 100, with Inspector Banks taking 3 of the top 10 slots.

Peter is delighted that all readers – those who read on paper, and those with visual deficiencies – enjoy his books, and he was particularly happy to see how popular his books are with the RNIB.

Season’s Greetings to everyone. I don’t have a photo of myself dressed as Santa Claus, so this one in a penguin suit will have to do. I’m with the Danish actor Bjarne Henriksen from the hit UK TV series The Killing at the Crime and Thriller Awards at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London, 7th October 2011. Notice it’s late in the evening and the dicky bow is gone.

ITV has ordered three more DCI Banks TV dramas from Left Bank, the producer of the four that have already been broadcast. These will be broadcast in 2012, but we have no firm air dates yet. The books to be adapted in this next series will be Wednesday’s Child, Dry Bones that Dream (released in the US and Canada as Final Account), and Strange Affair.

We still have no news regarding foreign sales, either for broadcast or on DVD. But as soon as we hear something, you’ll read about it here.

The first series of DCI Banks comes out on DVD on October 31 (Region 2 only), only a couple of weeks after it finished its very successful run on ITV. The six episodes are also available as downloads through iTunes UK. Though it is very difficult to tell from the cover and the information displayed on Amazon.co.uk, the DVD set does contain the pilot Aftermath in addition to Playing with Fire, Friend of the Devil and Cold is the Grave.

Stephen Tompkinson plays DCI Banks, Andrea Lowe is DS Annie Cabbot, Lorraine Burroughs is DS Winsome Jackman, Jack Deam is DC Ken Blackstone, Colin Tierney is Chief Supt. Gerry Rydell and Tom Shaw is DC Kevin Templeton. Guest stars include Charlotte Riley, Monica Dolan, John Bowe, Ian Bartholomew, Sian Breckin, Tamzin Merchant, Barry Sloane and Michael Maloney.

The series was shot in Yorkshire, with Otley standing in very nicely for Eastvale, and Banks’s cottage near West End is a sight to behold. Robert Murphy adapted three of the four stories, and Laurence Davey adapted Friend of the Devil. More details are available online at imdb.com.

At the moment, I am still waiting to hear about overseas sales and the commissioning of a second series. Keep checking this website for details, and I’ll let you know as soon as I find out.

Here are two Dutch covers for Aftermath and Dry Bones that Dream. Peter says, ” I think they look very strong, and have a bit of a Scandinavian crime look about them.”