64 books like Sirens

The first book in Rob Parker’s excellent Thirty Miles Trilogy sees twenty-seven bodies discovered, vacuum-packed, and buried in a woodland trench. DI Brendan Foley and his newly established police force are the ones tasked with cracking the case but is it a coincidence that these bodies have been buried in Foley’s hometown? Set in the historic town of Warrington, located midway between Manchester and Liverpool, the book explores the murky underworlds of the two cities and the consequences of a war between two drug-dealing gangs as it spills out into the surrounding area.

Jimmy is a homeless veteran grappling with PTSD but when he hears the sound of something heavy falling into the Tyne after an argument he does his best to pretend it’s not his problem. Then he sees the headline about a girl looking for her missing father, and the girl, Carrie, reminds him of someone he lost. He decides to stop hiding from his past and take action but when the police don’t believe him it’s up to Jimmy and Carrie to find out the truth – whatever the cost. This Newcastle-set mystery is both gripping and incredibly moving, not least because of its tragic yet wholly loveable protagonist.

When a local drug dealer goes missing in the small town of Wortley, West Leeds, no one cares. No one except Detective Sergeant Joe Romano, back on home turf in ‘God’s Own County’ of Yorkshire. And even when the drug dealer turns up dead some believe it poetic justice. Romano believes every life counts though, and with the killer about to strike again he puts everything on the line, including his career, to prove that no one has the right to kill. This is a very modern take on the classic police procedural novel, a world-weary cop fighting against the world-weary system in order to do the right thing. 

It’s always strange when another writer tackles the same city you’re mapping, but it’s also a reminder that we see places in fundamentally different ways. I write about Hull as an insider looking out with David taking the opposite approach, arriving in the city as a journalist. In the debut outing for DI Aector McAvoy, it may be his writing background that allows him to look the place in the eye and draw a fantastically vivid city dealing with multiple social issues, but also one in which he finds its heart packed with spirit and hope.

Stretching the geographical boundary a little, Dolan’s police series takes us to Peterborough, another location scared by political and financial neglect. It’s the terrain I tread in the Joe Geraghty series, our cities are not too different. Beyond that, Dolan also makes giving the police series a fresh shot of adrenaline looks easy. Based in the Hate Crimes Units, DI Zigic and DS Ferreira, give voice to those who are marginalised and without voice, a welcome rebalancing and one that questions the power and position of the police.

Published in 1970, it’s a touchstone crime novel for all writers wanting to explore the small towns and cities of the industrial north. Leaving London to return home to Scunthorpe, Jack Carter is a man on a revenge mission and wants to know who murdered his brother. With a keen eye for social attitudes and lives in a one-horse town, the novel transcends the page, and under the title of Get Carter, it gives us one of the great crime films of the 20th century. More than that, the novel’s Humber setting taught me I could also write about my neglected home city of Hull.

Cari Hunter never fails to invoke Northern England with every sense, and Nicola Victoria Vincent’s performances continue to be among the absolute best experiences. This story starts off with an EMT, Grace, being taken hostage by a wounded woman at gunpoint, and then manages to twist and shift the entire time you’re listening. Hunter’s ability to weave in a secondary romantic plot while people are dodging bullets, outwitting villains, and desperately trying to stay alive is brilliant, and my dog always gets a longer walk while I’ve got a Hunter thriller to listen to. If you’re a fan of thrillers and audiobooks, and have yet to bump into Hunter or Vincent, thank me later, once you’ve enjoyed the whole backlist.

Authenticity appeals to me the most. Donna Fletcher Crow shares my love of Celtic Christianity and meticulously researches her deeply evocative settings. She set out to write a nonfiction book about Pilgrimage. It never got written, but the profoundly resonant places she visited inspired A Very Private Grave.

Felicity is studying at a monastery when her favorite monk is bludgeoned to death. Fr Antony is soaked in his blood. Yet soon the two of them are on the run from the murderer. Their flight takes them to some of my favorite places–the holy island of Lindisfarne, Ninian’s hermitage at Whithorn, Hilda’s clifftop monastery at Whitby, Jarrow, that nurtured Bede, and St Cuthbert’s grave in Durham Cathedral. The settings are vividly brought to life, making this book a rich experience.

Set in Manchester, Ray Banks’s gift to us is a razor-sharp contemporary Private Investigator series, a relative rarity within the UK crime writing scene. His surly PI, Cal Innes, may be battered and bruised, but his big heart continues to beat. Finding himself in the centre of a racist uprising in the city, it’s a place that needs a hero and he’s going to be the man who rises to the occasion. Using the classic PI template created by the great US writers, it showed me that I could also adapt the format and apply it to my own writing and PI, Joe Geraghty.

The North of England isn’t all post-industrial urban centres of decay. As well as being home to large and important cities, its green spaces are plentiful and attract numerous tourists to its many attractions. Frances Brody’s PI Kate Shackleton series makes use of Yorkshire’s picturesque and pleasant rural settings, not least the rolling moors leading to the coastal town of Whitby in the series’ eighth outing. Set in the 1920s, Brody’s series is also a reminder of the importance of subverting and challenging social norms, but never at the expense of entertaining the reader.