Sitting next to a London author (who shall remain nameless) at a dinner recently, I was paid something of a mixed compliment. ‘I like you, Barry,’ I was told, ‘you’re a good northern boy – not one of these Southern literary types.’ (In fact, the word used was not ‘types’ but a collective noun referring, I believe, to adherents of autoeroticism.) Sadly, however, I had to disabuse my companion of the notion that I was still a northerner (though I let the word ‘boy’ ride). I pointed out that I’d spent more years in the dark literary back alleys of London than my twenty or so formative northern years when the Pier Head, the Mersey Ferry and the Liverpool Philharmonic pub were my stomping grounds. However – as they say – once a northerner, always a northerner. And I never feel the truth of this adage more than when I am in the companionable company of members of the Murder Squad (a very civilised group, despite the moniker). This loose conglomeration of northern crime authors actually sport more differences than things in common – and they’re a bloody-minded bunch who’ll quickly tell you this – but there is a shared dark humour, a wry self-deprecation and an outlook on the world that somehow contrives to be both gloomy and cheerful (though perhaps the cheerfulness is a species of gallows humour). In Murder Squad company, I find myself involuntarily undergoing a startling regional transplant; it wouldn’t be quite true to say that all my northerness comes rushing back (after all, I still have my long ‘a’s, unlike the short ones of Martin Edwards and Margaret Murphy), but despite the London veneer I suppose I’m still a Liverpudlian, even though I have a great antipathy to such local icons as the football teams and TV’s professional scousers. Writing about and reviewing crime fiction for many years has kept me in touch with Messieurs et Mesdames Edwards, Murphy, Cleeves, Pawson and Staincliffe (note the French casually dropped in there – proof of my effete southernisation), and I must confess that (leaving aside their impressive crime-writing credentials) these sanguinary scribes are as stimulating companions as you will find. They are such good company, in fact, that I can even accept the fact that Margaret Murphy will even decline writing commissions (’Too busy,’ she says – can you believe it?); or that Martin Edwards has an annoying habit of spotting typos in an impeccable piece one may have written, though he never (well, hardly ever) pins back one’s ears on the finer points of law.
However, readers of this anthology will not give a damn about the fact that Cath Staincliffe knows which B&Q sells the cheapest paint stripper, or that Stuart Pawson used to be seen on railway platforms, a small notebook and stub of pencil in hand. Or that Ann Cleeves once wore wellies as an auxiliary coastguard. What counts is the considerable crime fiction expertise of this group, and I can put my hand on my heart and type (with the other hand) the following sentence: the concatenation of talent to be found in this anthology makes the crime lists of many a publisher look (by comparison) impoverished. Reading these provocative, ingenious and sometimes disturbing stories, you will, in fact, be aware of more of those dissimilarities than the congruences between these writers: Ann Cleeves’ cool, precise prose contrasts sharply with the more off-kilter psychological approach of Margaret Murphy, while the dark humour of Stuart Pawson is some distance from the stripped-down approach of Martin Edwards.
There is, however, one thing that all the writers in this collection have in common: an awareness of the consequences of crime upon the human psyche – the destructive effects on both those who commit the crimes and those on the receiving end. But if all that sounds a little po-faced, don’t worry. The one thing that all the members of the Murder Squad have in common is an unerring grasp of the storyteller’s art. There is not a single piece here that will not (within a paragraph or so) have you comprehensively gripped, Ancient Mariner-style. And as to the question of whether or not there is a northern sensibility at work here – well, frankly, it doesn’t really matter. Crime fiction has always been – and remains – one of the most universal of genres, and the issues for both displaced northerners like myself and for those writers represented here who still live north of the Watford Gap are, essentially, the same. The matters of life and death so fruitfully explored in these stories are relevant to all of us, whether we are reading them in a coffee house in Islington or its equivalent in Manchester. Having said that, the minute I finished the last story in the collection I felt an irresistible impulse: I found myself booking a ticket to experience again a sensation I’ve savoured all my life – that moment when the train pulls into Lime Street station, and I step out to the sight of the monolithically brooding St George’s Hall and the wonderfully preserved William Brown Street. Did you know Liverpool has more listed buildings than any other British city? Uh oh… getting all northern again; this is an insidious collection.
But if you’re in the mood for a trip north, all you really need is the price of this exemplary anthology – which I trust you have already spent. A warning note, though: you’ll find the north can be a dangerous place…
Barry Forshaw, 2011
Barry Forshaw is the author of The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction and the editor of British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia