Needless Alley

"I love a bit of noir. Three of my five picks I would categorise in that noir category. Over the years, it’s a genre that has been more associated with American writers, but now we are getting a lot more British crime fiction of that kind, set in this period. I also love that this book is set in Birmingham, as we have a lot of London- and New York-based books. So it’s nice to go somewhere different. I never knew where this book was going, but I loved the journey. It’s very character driven, too, which I love. If you are into Peaky Blinders , it has a similar vibe, some similar elements—there are lots of scenes on canal boats, things like that. It’s a great book to lose yourself in for a weekend. Well, it’s kind of dark, right? That’s a literal translation. I guess we are moving away from the cosier, safer elements of mystery. A lot of Golden Age fiction focuses on that Agatha Christie style: there’s a straightforward murder—a poisoning, a stabbing—without the murkier elements like sexually-based crimes, drug addictions, those harder topics. It’s more like: Someone’s been shot! Let’s solve the mystery! That kind of thing. Whereas noir does go into those darker places that we might not necessarily want to think about, and we might hope are removed from our own lives."