by JULIET WATERS

After finishing Peter Robinson's latest Alan Banks mystery, I started rereading Playing With Fire for clues, but not clues I might have missed about the identity of the murderer. I was looking for clues to confirm my hunch that Canada may one day be getting a visit from the British Inspector.

It would be about time, given that Robinson's been living in Canada for close to 30 years, a fact that would probably shock many of his fans. Read British or U.S. reviews of his work and you'll never find any mention of Robinson's residency.

In a typical example, Janet Maslin from the New York Times, calls Robinson a writer "from Britain." True enough Robinson was born in Yorkshire, and studied at the University of Leeds. But he did his PhD at York and moved to Toronto in the '70s. Through 14 increasingly popular novels, however, Inspector Banks has become inextricably linked with Yorkshire, and Robinson has been so often grouped with the best of contemporary British noir (think P.D. James crossed with Ian Rankin), that it's no surprise if his international publishers haven't been working too hard to clear up the misunderstanding.

Unfortunately, to make my case that Robinson may be laying the groundwork for a cross-Atlantic investigation, I'd have to spoil the plot. Plot-spoiling is the inevitable risk of reviewing any mystery novel, so I don't review many. But I couldn't resist reviewing just one Banks novel, if only because of the comparisons to Ian Rankin's great creation: the hard-drinking, hard-living, rock-'n'-roll-loving Inspector Rebus.

Fans of Rankin are likely to be split over how well Banks holds up to the comparison. Those who prefer the Rebus edge may find Banks a bit middle-aged. On the other hand, those who think Rebus is starting to get a little old for the hard life may appreciate Banks's sophistication. However, even though Banks prefers Bach, he still listens to the Clash sometimes. And he maintains a weakness for bad action movies; you've got to love a brainy inspector who finds watching TV a good way to sort out his thoughts.

Nevertheless, even when he drinks one scotch too many, Banks is discriminating. If you meet anyone in a Banks novel who drinks Glenlivet, this is obviously a poser, if not a sociopath. As his partner and former love interest Detective Annie Cabbot describes him: "He's a little traditional, conservative, even, on the surface, but broad-minded and free-spirited underneath it all."

Playing With Fire starts out with a typically gruesome crime scene. A young junkie is found burned to death on a barge in a Yorkshire canal, where she and her boyfriend have been squatting. Fans of CSI will appreciate informative details such as what happens to a lip piercing if you burn to death, or that fire often changes hair colour from grey to blond, or blond to red. Before long we're led into the morally and criminally complex world of drug abuse, arson, incest and art fraud.

While Robinson's Canadian residency might surprise some readers, it will surprise no one reading this solid, well-written page turner that he's won just about every crime-writing prize there is: several Arthur Ellis awards, an Edgar, the British Crime Writers' Association's Dagger in the Library and even the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière.

What distinguishes this novel, however, is the creation of a villain who seems to be a lot more like Banks than he may want to admit. A villain who's even like Banks's creator, something of a chameleon. A villain who must disappear at the end of this novel, and who probably won't be able to stick around Yorkshire. A villain who may have to move to a country where no one would suspect he lives. A country that's a little traditional, conservative even, on the surface, but broad-minded and free–spirited underneath it all. Whether or not he ends up in Canada, this is a villain readers will definitely be seeing again somewhere.

Playing With Fire by Peter Robinson., McClelland & Stewart, hc, 349pp, $36.99