Posted on Tue, Jul. 04, 2006email thisprint thisreprint or license
thisMurder mystery with a rock beatBritish novelist Peter Robinson
pens "Piece of My Heart."
By David Hiltbrand
Inquirer Staff Writer
With his scant hair and observant eyes, Peter Robinson looks more
like a vicar than a rocker. But give the guy his props. He was in
the audience when the Who recorded the masterful Live at Leeds in
1970. And he was there recently when the band (minus John Entwistle
and Keith Moon) reprised the show. Both performances took place in
the refectory at Leeds University, Robinson's alma mater.

"I was invited by the vice chancellor," Robinson says of The Who's
return. "I guess I'm sort of an old boy made good."

The concert events neatly mirror Robinson's latest mystery, Piece of
My Heart, the 16th in a wonderfully sustained and enjoyable series
featuring Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks of North Yorkshire.

Piece of My Heart details two interlocking murder investigations. In
the present, Banks is looking into the violent death of a rock
journalist. Another detective in 1969 is trying to find out who
killed a young hippie at an outdoor rock festival. All the detective
knows for sure is that she was killed during Led Zeppelin's set.

"I like writing about how the past can intrude on the present,"
Robinson said before a reading last month at McGillin's Olde Ale
House in Philadelphia. "I wrote the 1969 section separately and then
the Banks story, and it took me a whole summer to put the two
together and cut and trim and get it right so the echoes were in the
right places and you meet characters then and now not too far apart
that you didn't recognize them."

Myriad musical references are a staple of Robinson's mysteries, but
this one is absolutely crammed with songs and lore about vintage
rock and folk groups including Savoy Brown and Pentangle.

The songs mentioned in Piece of My Heart would have made an
interesting companion CD for the book. "I wish," Robinson said. "It
would have been perfect and we actually did consider it. But the
problem is it's too expensive to get the rights to all those songs
by Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. We compromised by putting a playlist
in the Web site."

At the center of the mystery is a fictional band, the Mad Hatters,
who, like early Fleetwood Mac and Pink Floyd, had a member wander
too far into the psychedelic forest.

Robinson became so involved with his imaginary band that he even
wrote and recorded a Mad Hatters song. "It's on an anthology called
A Merry Band of Murderers, which comes out in September. There are a
number of writers in there," including Jeffery Deaver and Val
McDermid, he said. "The idea is you write a story and a song
connected with the story. The Mad Hatters song is really quite good.
It sounds like '69 Pink Floyd."

Much has changed since those days. Robinson went to Canada to pursue
his postgraduate work, which is where he caught the mystery bug. "I
got interested in crime fiction when I was writing my Ph.D.
dissertation," he said. "I started reading Raymond Chandler and
Georges Simenon and I really, really liked them. I started writing
my first crime novel in the evenings. It was almost a relief from
writing all that dry academic prose during the day."

Although his novels are set in England, Robinson, 56, has resided in
Toronto for more than 20 years. He taught at community colleges
until the success of 1999's In a Dry Season made it possible to live
off his writing.

"What I really wanted to do was teach English at the university
level," he said. "But it was very tough to get a job when I came
out. I basically ended up teaching how to write a sentence to people
who really didn't want to know."

One of the reasons Robinson likes his adopted city is that Toronto
has an efficient transit system. The author doesn't drive. "I just
never learned," he said. "Probably because growing up we never had a
car, so when the age came to learn, I didn't."

He still spends part of each year back in Yorkshire to soak up the
local color for his fiction. "I don't think I could write about
England and Yorkshire in the same way if I had been living there the
whole time," he said. "It's worked for me. I know writers who have
to be in the place they're writing about for it to work. For me, I
need the distance."

Robinson links his style with the old-fashioned British approach of
P.D. James rather than American crime fiction, which he describes
as "a little more Hemingwayesque, perhaps a bit more action, shorter
sentences."

The primary difference between the two schools, according to
Robinson, is a question of ballistics. "More police have guns in the
U.K. now," he says, "but in general a detective in his normal
business is not going to have one. You can't just kick the door open
and go in with your gun. If you face a difficult or violent
situation, the British detective is going to rely more on brains
than brawn, more on his mouth than a gun. That has far-reaching
consequences in terms of how we write the crime novel, much more
than people realize."

As someone who avoids planning too far into the future, Robinson
asserts that he hasn't contemplated how the Banks series will
conclude.

"I don't know if I'm going to kill him off. Probably not, because
that's too common. Killing off your detective has been done so many
times. I'd like to find a better way of putting him out to pasture.
A promotion maybe," he says, laughing. "He can become a chief
constable and then there'll be no more investigating."

ONLINE EXTRA

To read an excerpt from "Piece of My Heart," go to
http://go.philly.com/books

Songs of Murder

Here's a partial playlist of songs mentioned in Piece of My Heart,
as listed on Peter Robinson's site, InspectorBanks.com:

"Painting Box," the Incredible String Band

"Fotheringay," Fairport Convention

"Julia Dream," Pink Floyd

"I'd Rather Go Blind," Chicken Shack

"I Can't Quit You Baby," Led Zeppelin

"Once I Had a Sweetheart," Pentangle

"Northern Sky," Nick Drake

"Train to Nowhere," Savoy Brown

"Needle of Death," Bert Jansch

"Shakin' All Over," The Who

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Many paths to patriotism




The road to patriotism takes many avenues.

There's the obvious, the flying of the Stars and Stripes. A
fireworks display exploding to the beat of a Sousa march. A solemn
salute to our fallen heroes.

After 9/11, Americans unleashed a wave of patriotism not seen in
other countries. Then, it dissipated. What is patriotism? That can
be best answered not in what, but in how it is expressed. Today,
we're short on rhetoric and long on suggestions for patriotic action
that can start now, on the anniversary of our nation's founding, and
continue year-round:

Glendora charity, 4 The Troops, has been merged with Operation
Homefront based in Santa Ana, which sends care packages to soldiers
(www.operationhomefront.net/donate/).

Veterans For Peace, Los Angeles Chapter, sets up a display in Santa
Monica every Sunday. One cross for every soldier who has died in
Iraq and Afghanistan. They are looking for volunteers. Click on
www.veteransforpeace.org.

The Virginia-based Army Emergency Relief is one of the biggest
charities helping the armed forces. They donate money to soldiers
and their families in financial need. Donations can be made at their
Web site, www.aerhq.org/donation.asp.

Project Linus' blanketeers have been making homemade warm-and-
fuzzies for babies and children in distress for years. Lately, that
includes sons or daughters of American soldiers killed in the war on
terror. Contact Suzann at (818) 994-9675 or by e-mail at
suzquilt@.... Donations can be made at
www.projectlinus.org/donations.shtml. Information on making your own
blanket is at www.projectlinus.org/blanketeer.shtml


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Singer Stevie Nicks has been visiting soldiers at Walter Reed Army
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Have a safe Fourth. And may God bless America and her troops.
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What Is Platinum Weird?
Rick Ellis, Staff Writer

POSTED: 12:18 pm CDT July 3, 2006
UPDATED: 1:04 pm CDT July 3, 2006

Email This Story | Print This Story

Viewers of cable TV music channels in recent days have been
bombarded with commercials teasing a previously unknown group
named "Platinum Weird."

In the spots, celebrities such as Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and
Christina Aguilera rave about the band and their "unbelievable
sound." Mick Jagger is shown discussing the band's 1970s gig at his
birthday party.

If you're curious about this previously unknown band and enter their
name in a search engine, you'll find links to a number of sites that
claim to be fan sites for the group. The band has a page on
MySpace , there's a clip about the group posted on YouTube, and VH1
has a special on the group debuting this week.

But what is Platinum Weird?


A number of the fan web sites have posted a press release, which
purports to tell the story of the band.

According to the release, in 1974, Eurythmics guitarist Dave Stewart
formed a band named Platinum Weird in North London with his female
songwriting partner, Erin Grace. Their debut gig was at Mick
Jagger's birthday party and ultimately Elton John's Rocket label
decided to sign them. The release quotes Stevie Nicks as claiming
Grace's style was a big inspiration for the look she later exhibited
in her "Rhiannon" period.

But Grace supposedly mysteriously disappeared before the band's
first album release, leaving an unfinished album that was shelved
forever.

Now Stewart is relaunching the band, this time partnering with Kara
DioGardi. DioGardi is an in-demand songwriter who has penned hits
for singers such as Gwen Stefani, Kelly Clarkson and Ashlee Simpson.

While the story of the band is compelling, it is also apparently
fictitious.

While Stewart has been coy in recent interviews about the project,
it's not a band that seems to have ever been mentioned publicly
before Stewart and DioGardi began work on the new CD.

In fact, there's a fairly substantial interview on VH1's web site
with DioGardi that reveals the true story of the duo's new CD.

In the June 2005 interview, DioGardi explains that she and Stewart
were originally brought together by Interscope Geffen A&M Records
head Jimmy Iovine, who wanted them to write a new single for the
Pussycat Dolls.

When they met, they didn't compose anything helpful for the proposed
single, but they did write some tunes which Iovine insisted on
hearing. He convinced Stewart and DioGardi to continue working
together and eventually signed the duo to Interscope Music.

"It's pop, but it's not like, 'Here comes the chorus,' " DioGuardi
told VH1. "It's not as cheesy as what I usually do, a little less
obvious."

The Platinum Weird CD, set to be released in August, was produced by
John Shanks, DioGuardi's collaborator on Ashlee Simpson's "Pieces of
Me," Hilary Duff's "Come Clean" and Lindsay Lohan's "Over."

Regardless of the authenticity of the band's public pedigree, the
pre-release hype for the project is notable for its extensive use of
social sharing sites such as MySpace and YouTube.
Distributed by Internet Broadcasting. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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