It was absence that sparked Robinson's descriptive passions. He began writing crime fiction only after he immigrated to Canada in the early 1970s. These days, while he sets up his laptop in the east end of Toronto, his imagination still wanders around the dales of Yorkshire where he was born and raised. In fact, he was driven to reading and writing crime fiction as a doctoral student and a frustrated poet much enamoured of traditional narrative poetry replete with capital letters and rhyme.