Not Safe After Dark and Other Stories

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

This volume of stories by Peter Robinson, creator of the internationally
acclaimed Inspector Banks series, is the first collection of his short
fiction to be published in Canada, but it is similar to a volume of the
same title published in the United States in 1998. It contains a new
introduction and a novella published here for the first time. The other
stories, all of which first appeared in magazines or were commissioned
for anthologies, take place in 19th-century and World War II England, in
Paris during the 1968 student uprising, and in such contemporary
settings as Florida, California, and Toronto.

To best appreciate “The Duke’s Wife,” a rather sketchy yarn told
in the first person by a woman narrator, one needs familiarity with
Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure; the narrative briefly recaps the
events of the play and then relates the fates of the principal
characters. Like many of the other tales, this one involves murder.

There are two short stories featuring Inspector Banks here, but this
reader’s favourite is the novella “Going Back,” a moving portrait
of Banks’s earlier life revealed when he visits his parents for their
golden wedding anniversary (and solves some murders as well). It takes
place chronologically between two Banks novels, which many readers of
this book will certainly have read. Another gem is “Fan Mail,” in
which a writer who lives in the Beaches area of Toronto offers advice to
a would-be murderer and the result catches him—and the reader—with a
deliciously amusing and somewhat horrific twist at the end.

A good collection of short fiction like this is a perfect book for the
bedside table or the guest room.