NOIR BACKYARD
Crime novelist AA Dhand explores the seamy side of his hometown, with Tina Jackson
Tina Jackson
In the lull before his second novel, Girl Zero, is published, AA (Amit) Dhand is sitting in Lister Park on a sunny day watching an elderly Asian couple feeding the ducks. It couldn’t be more idyllic.
It’s also the setting for the opening of his bestselling first novel, last year’s crime thriller Streets of Darkness; by the end of the scene, dark knight cop Harry Virdee has discovered the naked, crucified corpse of one of the city’s most powerful businessmen with a swastika carved into his chest. Vividly evoking the grisly underbelly of a post-industrial city best known for riots and racial division, it was an arresting, hard-hitting debut, praised by Lee Child, that attracted comparisons with Luther and The Wire. Amit is one of WM’s biggest recent success stories – we first found out about his Big Five publishing deal when he sent us the news that Streets of Darkness was to be published by Transworld imprint Bantam as a submission for Subscriber Spotlight.
‘Bradford is my home city,’ he says. ‘I have seen it transform. 200 years ago it was the richest, most powerful city in Europe. Now it’s one of the most deprived. It’s fallen from grace. There are aspects that frustrate me. It’s monocultural. There are questions that need to be asked. I want to relay the information that’s there to spark a dialogue.’ The Bradford in his books is riven with tension but his picture of it goes beyond stereotypes. ‘I’ve put Bradford on the bestseller list,’ he says with justified pride. ‘Taken what’s seen as a negative and flipped it into a positive.’
Amit wanted to write a crime novel that put Bradford centre stage for as wide a readership as possible. ‘No-one has done this before. There was no British Asian character like Harry. You get caught up in the characters, the twists, the plots. Their ethnicity doesn’t matter. I was very aware that an Asian author setting his books in the UK had never been on the bestseller list. I thought that was a tragedy. The authors that had tried and failed had set their books exclusively in an Asian setting, and I wanted to write a book that showcased the multiculturalism of the UK without preaching.’
His interest in crime was sparked when he was a boy, living with his parents above their corner shop. ‘We had a video store. My dad used to go play snooker on Monday evenings and my mum would go to bed and I’d sneak down and watch thrillers. One of the movies I picked up was Silence of the Lambs. I was twelve. I was too afraid to sleep so I ran into my mum’s room and explained. In the morning my dad gave me a real telling off. On Saturday we went to Bradford Children’s Library to get the usual five books. I wandered into the adult section and picked up Silence of the Lambs. I’d never realised films could also be books. I couldn’t believe that words on a page could get into my mind that way. It literally transformed me. I wanted to write a book. I started writing.’