The case for Leeds
by John Barlow
Crime writers
often base their novels in a specific place, and become identified with that
city or area: Ian Rankin (Edinburgh), Peter James (Brighton), John Harvey (Nottingham),
Peter Robinson (North Yorkshire), Ann Cleeves Northumberland, Shetlands), Nick
Quantril (Hull). The new wave of self-published writers has continued this
tradition: Kerry Wilkinson (Manchester), Bill Rogers (Manchester), Mel Sherratt
(Stoke)...
The setting
for these books become part of the works themselves, almost characters in the
fiction. When you open a new novel by one of these writers, you sink back into
the familiar atmosphere of a familiar place, just as you reacquaint yourself
with the main character.
Looking
back at that (very incomplete) list, there’s a lot of northern towns and
cities. Whereas ‘literary’ fiction is often associated with the south,
especially London, the same cannot be said of crime writing, where both Tartan
and Northern Noir are squarely on the map.
Except for Leeds. England’s third
largest city (after Birmingham and London) is more or less absent from the list.
Sure, there’s David Peace. But his novels, for some reason, don’t resonate with
the city in the same way as Ian Rankin’s do of Edinburgh. We do have Kate Atkinson’s
STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG there, but apart from that, Leeds really lacks a
major presence in crime writing. Which is strange, because rival city
Manchester is bursting with crime fiction, so much that at any moment we might
expect the city’s Tourism Office to take out ads in the national press
reminding people that this is fiction, and that Deansgate and Peter Street are
not in fact littered with bleeding corpses.
A couple of
years ago I wrote my first crime thriller, and decided to set it in Leeds. As
part of the research for the book, I contacted the West Yorkshire Police,
explained who I was, and was allocated an official contact on the city’s CID. I
asked him what it was like working on serious crime in Leeds. The best place!
he said, grinning. He went on to tell me how interesting and varied crime was
in the city, and that for a CID officer there was no better posting.
I started
to realise that Leeds was in fact perfect for crime fiction. It is large, with
a varied economy and a rich social mix. There’s the broad swathe of 1960s
social housing to the north of the city, which at one point included Quarry
Hill, at the time the largest social housing project in the UK. Then, just a
few miles further out are the millionaires’ residences and golf clubs of the
city’s rich folk, many of whom are extremely rich, and absolutely fair game for
any fictional criminal...
Leeds also
has a long history of immigration, with a number of very well established
ethnic communities. For example, when young Polish immigrants began to arrive
in the city in recents years, they found the remnants of an earlier wave of Polish
immigration, including social centres.
Then,
inevitably, there’s the Ripper. The hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper was
coordinated from Millgarth Police Station in Leeds city centre. It was a
watershed in British policing, and showed how inadequate the investigative practices
of the time were; at one point, the floor in Millgarth used to store the huge
card index system for the Ripper inquiry had to be reinforced, since it was
threatening to bring down the whole building.
A direct
consequence of this was the HOLMES nation database, which figures in most
police procedural novels these days, since all serious crime is entered into
its vast digital store. Every police officer I have talked from the city to
carries the Ripper investigation deep in their psyche, part of the DNA of
policing there.
To say
Leeds could be the new Edinburgh is not stretching the imagination. And given
that the Harrogate Festival is just a bus ride away (OK, a short drive in your
BMW), it seemed a good place to celebrate Leeds in all its (fictional) criminal
glory. The Tartan lot may have had all the headlines up until now, but I think
Northern Noir is ripe for a surge, with Leeds at the helm. I’m doing my bit,
with a series set right in Leeds city centre. I don’t know to what extent this
is a risk, but when the first novel came out, last year, a blogger from Australia
not only reviewed the book, but wrote a
piece about the city itself.
So, if
you’re looking for a new destination in your crime reading, give Leeds a try.
The streets are not littered with bleeding corpses just yet, but I’m doing my
best.
John
Barlow’s second novel set in Leeds, FATHER AND SON, is out now. Buy it here:
Amazon
(US)
Amazon
(UK)
Or find him at his website, www.johnbarlow.net.
