Peter Robinson and John Harvey are two of Great Britain's established crime novelists whose books are set in Yorkshire and Nottingham, regions of England with distinct characteristics that figure prominently in their work. Both offered their views on those American writers whose works re-create their native land and countrymen.

John Harvey

American jazz is a motif that runs through Harvey's work, largely in his crime series featuring Charlie Resnick, a soulful cop who spends his off-hours listening to the greats. Harvey's Web site (www.mellotone.co.uk) sounds the jazz note as well.

A onetime secondary school teacher like Elizabeth George, the 69-year-old Harvey is now one of Britain's most prolific authors, with more than 90 books of fiction and poetry on his bibliography. His series of 10 novels featuring Resnick established Harvey as major crime fiction writer and after a hiatus, he returns with No. 11 this year.

"In principle, I have no problem with the idea of a writer setting a novel in a country he or she neither lives in nor knows very well," he wrote in an e-mail. "Martin Cruz Smith did a pretty good job with 'Gorky Park,' even though I believe he'd never been inside Russia."

Harvey grew up in Nottingham, best-known to Americans as Robin Hood's neighborhood. "For myself, I prefer to use a location I know well," he writes.

Admitting that he doesn't read very much crime fiction, including George and the Todds, Harvey thinks that British writers do well in America because "their books give readers a sense of another country (sometimes viewed in quite a nostalgic way perhaps), but I would hope the main reason might be that those books which succeed are the ones which are well written."

Harvey's newest crime novel is "Gone to Ground" (Harcourt, $25).

Peter Robinson

Growing up in Yorkshire in the north of England, Robinson's knowledge of the landscape and people were second nature to him.

He's spent most of his adult life in Canada, however, a fact that influenced his writing.

"Because I've been living away from the U.K. for so long ... the way I approach writing about where I come from differs from that of writers who still live there," he writes. "I probably introduce extra elements of nostalgia and detachment into my work."

That work consists of 16 Inspector Banks novels starting in 1987. The latest, "Friend of The Devil" (Morrow, $24.95), was published this month.

Unlike Harvey, Robinson, 57, has read and met George and the Todds on publicity tours. While praising their books, he has some reservations:

"Anyone who didn't grow up there, however, will always write like an outsider because they didn't hear the language every day and weren't part of the fabric of the culture and history," he writes.

"Graham Greene once said, 'For writers it is always said that the first 20 years of life contain the whole of experience -- the rest is observation.' And I think he's right."

Robinson believes that outsiders can seem authentic: "A good writer can, however, with a lot of research and great powers of observation, be very convincing, and in that sense it's like writing about another period in history, one you didn't live in."