Peter will be appearing at the Manitoba Theatre for Young People in Winnipeg next Saturday, 11th June, starting at 7.30pm with some pre-show music by the Steve Kirby Trio. The introductions start at 8.00pm and Peter will read from 8.20 to 8.45, after which the Trio will close the first half. He’ll be back on stage at 9.15pm for an onstage interview with Charlene Diehl, followed by a signing.

The pilot of the DCI Banks series, Aftermath, is being shown on the UKTV in Australia this Friday at 6.30pm. Three more novels from the series are being filmed in Yorkshire at the moment and will air on TV in the UK this autumn: Playing with Fire, Friend of the Devil and Cold is the Grave.

For more on Aftermath, see the book’s page.

Sometimes the strangest things happen. As most of you who read the books know, DCI Banks loves many different kinds of music, and one of the singer-songwriters he listens to in All the Colours of Darkness is Keren Ann. Late last year I was approached by Keren Ann’s record company, EMI, to write the “bio” for her new album, 101. I had no idea what this meant but soon found out that it’s a sort of description of the songs and music on the album and a little bit of information about how they came into being. Mostly, it goes out with review copies and other publicity-related stuff. Hardly a job for a novelist, I thought.

However, Keren Ann had seen that I had picked one of her songs for a New York Times playlist I was asked to compile a few years ago, and she was curious. As she was looking for something a bit different, more creative, she asked me if i could write a sort of story around the songs, as many of them involve intrigue and even murder. So I gave it a shot. I listened to the music. We emailed back and forth a bit and ended up with something a little personal and a little surreal, but certainly different from the examples of other bios I had seen.

Anyway, 101 is released in the UK on 4th April, and was picked as CD of the Week in the Sunday Times. There’s also a long interview with Keren Ann in the 3rd April’s Observer review section, and a video on the Guardian web site in which she discusses writing the album’s first song, “My Name is Trouble,” and sings a lovely acoustic version.

There are also plenty of Keren Ann videos on You Tube, but for more information check out her web site, www.kerenann.com. You’ll find my bio here.

I’ve just got back from Lyon, where I had a great time at the Quais du Polar festival. It was wonderful to meet so many French fans of DCI Banks, and so many readers who were about to try him for the first time. One of the special attractions of festivals for the writers who attend is seeing old friends and making new ones, and it was great to meet up with John Harvey, Karin Slaughter, Craig Russell, Peter Gutteridge and Martin Solares again, and to chat with David Peace, R.J. Ellory, Arne Dahl, Greg Olear, Brian Freeman, Pierre Lemaitre and Arni Thorarinsson for the first time. The festival organisers and my French publishers Albin Michel did a great job. I wish I had some photographs to post, but I was so busy signing and talking that I didn’t have time to take any! From what little I saw, Lyon looked like a lovely city and I must go back there and see it one day.

Peter has been invited to the Quais du Polar festival to be held in Lyon, France, March 25-27. Among other things, Peter will be discussing the television adaptations of his books, and a trailer for DCI Banks: Aftermath will be shown at the festival.

Peter will be participating in the following events:

Saturday, 26 March, from 2 pm to 3.30 pm at the Hotel de Ville, in Lyon: THE EXILE AND THE KINGDOM: CROSSED LOOKS ON ENGLAND, with John Harvey, David Peace and R.J. Ellory.

Saturday, 26 March, from 7.30 pm to 8.30 pm, in the Tony Garnier Room: SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER: POLAR AND MUSIC, with Arne Dahl (Sweden), Marc Villard (France), Greg Olear (USA) and Hugues Pagan (France).

After the success of the first DCI Banks adaptation, Aftermath, the first full series of three two-episode dramas is going into production at the end of March, with filming to be made in Yorkshire again. Peter hopes that he can have another cameo appearance in the new episodes. (You did see him in the first one, right?)

The three books being adapted are Playing With Fire, Friend of the Devil and Cold is the Grave. If you haven’t read the books, make sure you do. If you have, you may want to read them again.