During years spent in Canada, he carved a career as a best selling crime writer. Now, having bought a flat in Richmond, North Yorkshire, Peter Robinson is back on home turf. He tells Women's Editor Sarah Foster how the humble whodunit has moved on.

"TREADING carefully across the stone flags, Banks and Annie followed the lights to the edge of the living room. There, sprawled on the floor near the fireplace, lay the body of a man.

He was lying on his face, so Banks couldn't tell how old he was, but his clothing - jeans and a dark green sweatshirt - suggested he was youngish.

And Winsome was right: there was no doubt about this one. He could see even from a few feet away that the back of his head was a bloody mess and a long trail of dark, coagulating blood gleamed in the torchlight."

And this from someone who doesn't even like blood! Peter Robinson, a world renowned author with 18 novels to his name, makes the confession early on in our chat. It's pretty surprising, in view of the bucketfuls in his tales, but on reflection - a raging bloodlust surely can't be good - perhaps it's just as well. "I don't think I could do that job," says Peter, when asked if he's a would-be policeman. "I don't like the sight of blood. Not that they see it that often, as everyone tells you the real job is very boring. In novels we cut all that stuff out and get to the interesting stuff."

Though he denies being a closet sleuth, for almost 20 years that's just what he's been. Not as himself - his squeamish nature would no doubt debar him - but in the guise of his famed protagonist, the Yorkshire detective Alan Banks. "I started crime writing in the early 1980s and the first book was published in 1987, and that was a Chief Inspector Alan Banks novel," says Peter. "I did one novel that was set in LA and there was another one called Caedmon's Song, which was set in Whitby, but all the others have been Inspector Banks."

The sharp detective with a tangled home life has been a blessing, bringing Peter a clutch of awards. And yet, at one time, his only thought was of being a poet. "I started writing when I was a little lad - I used to make up stories and illustrate them myself," says the Leeds-born author. "As I got older I got more interested in poetry, so for many years, from the age of 16 to my early thirties, I wrote poetry almost exclusively."

He scaled the heights of academia, going to Canada to do an MA. It was here, at Windsor University, that well-known writer Joyce Carol Oates became his tutor. "I didn't really know who she was - she wasn't quite as famous as she is now," says Peter. "I was writing poetry at the time and she was really very encouraging. She was very big on sharing books and writers who she thought might influence you or who you should experience.

"She used to have a big pile of books on the table in her office and would say 'take something', or she would give you a specific book and say 'take this one'. She had an influence in making me feel valued as a writer and that being a writer is a valid thing to be."

Does Peter feel that Oates, or anyone else, has helped to fashion his style? He says he does - but only in a broad sense. "It's hard to talk about influences in terms of style," he says. "It's sort of no one and everyone. I could say everybody I've read has influenced my style, from Thomas Hardy and Graham Greene to Ruth Rendell."

Yet he does concede that among his heroes, two stand out - for planting the seed of his career. "I got interested in crime fiction by reading Raymond Chandler and George Simenon," says Peter. "I had a lot of wrong impressions about crime writing. I thought it was all like Agatha Christie - just clever puzzles - and when I read these two writers I realised there were a lot of other things like character and atmosphere, like human psychology - all kinds of stuff. There's absolutely nothing wrong with Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple - it's just a different kind of writing."

So has the genre matured? While he acknowledges that, thanks to TV, the golden oldies are still around, he feels it has. "A lot of today's crime writing is more character-driven," says Peter. "It's become a lot more sophisticated. If you look at writers as diverse as PD James and George Pelecanos in America you can see how far it's come."

Perhaps predictably, he puts himself in the modern camp. I ask if his writing is pure escapism and he answers carefully. "It's partly escapism but I think one of the things my books, and most good crime fiction tries to do, is give an accurate picture of the society we live in today and human psychology, so it's a very honest kind of escapism."

Of course for Peter, there's his lasting relationship with Alan Banks. I put it to him that he must feel part of his made-up muse. "I don't feel it that strongly but sometimes if I'm writing about him doing something he just won't do it, so I guess he does talk back sometimes," he says. "I do get absorbed in his world, I think."

By anyone's standards, this is pretty grisly. Do thoughts of death ever bring him down? "I get a bit depressed and have nightmares sometimes, but if I'm going to have them, I'll share them with the rest of the world," he jokes.

To all appearances, Peter has had it good. His very first novel, Gallows View, won several plaudits, and as he kept on writing, so the prizes rolled in. Yet he claims it hasn't been a bed of roses. "For many years I was writing and publishing the books and they had an audience, but not a particularly large audience," he says. "Things started to change with my tenth novel and since then, my popularity has been increasing. I think I'm lucky to be able to do what I love and make a living at it but there have been difficult times."

Thankfully, his writing success has helped him reach his goal - of he and his wife, Sheila Halladay, having dual residency. "We've just bought a flat in Richmond so we're going to be splitting our time between Toronto and there," says Peter. "My wife is Canadian but she loves Yorkshire. It's something I've always wanted to do and was finally in a position to do it, so I thought 'why not?'"

So from now on, North Yorkshire will have another feted author in its midst. Will he keep on writing - and perhaps what his readers will want to know, will he keep on writing Alan Banks? "I'm going to carry on, certainly for the moment, because I haven't finished with him yet," says Peter. "When I get to the point when I have finished with him I don't think I'll kill him off because that's too obvious. I'll find a different way of finishing with him then I suppose there would always be a chance that I would write another book."

* Peter will be signing copies of his new book, the Chief Inspector Banks novel Piece of My Heart, at Ottakar's, Northallerton, at 12.30pm tomorrow and at Borders, Silverlink Retail Park, Wallsend, at the same time on Saturday. He will also give a talk at Ottakar's in Darlington at 7pm tomorrow.