AA Dhand: noir meets family in Bradford, the city of big ideas

AA Dhand: noir meets family in Bradford, the city of big ideas

By James Collingwood

Writer AA Dhand has just published his third crime novel featuring the detective Harry Virdee. City of Sinners along with his previous two books Streets of Darkness and Girl Zero feature detective Harry and his family and the streets of this city. The books are brilliantly written page turners that also explore Harry’s family and his mixed religion marriage to his Muslim wife Saima.

Hi Amit. City of Sinners has just been published. It must have been a busy week for you.

It was a busy launch at Waterstones last Friday I must say. People were queuing round the building which was quite exciting. It’s also been an exciting Bradford Festival this year. It just gets busier and busier every year. It’s good for the city It’s also really good to be part of and working at the Literature Festival.

With City of Sinners I get the impression the Bradford locations are important. And there’s also a scene in Saltaire.

City of Sinners starts off with the killer sitting in City Park by the fountains. The opening chapter starts with the dead body of an Asian girl who is found hanging about 100ft from the ceiling of Bradford Waterstones. Harry pulls her down lies her on the ground and finds her eyes are stitched shut. Then she does what a dead body should never do – her eyes start twitching. I really like using locations. I use the City Park a lot. This book also uses upper Leeds Road, Barkerend Road and Mumtaz restaurant. I also bring back to life the old Maestro’s nightclub. I went there a lot as a kid and I wanted to bring it back to life in fiction and it was lovely to do that. It’s a bit sad that it’s been allowed to decay the way it has. I’ve got a lot of good memories of that place. With the scenes located in Saltaire when I’m plotting I like to walk looking for locations and if a place is peaceful and tranquil what better place to add a bit of darkness! It’s about getting the best location for what’s about to happen. Waterstones is the most beautiful bookshop in the world but if you’ve got a body hanging from the ceiling it adds to impending doom (Waterstones staff loved that scene by the way).

Without giving away spoilers Harry’s family is obviously important throughout the book. The relationship with Harry and Saima and their family and in laws (particularly Harry’s father) is a major theme?

I’ve always got two or three things going on in the book, so it never gets stagnant. Speaking a bit about Bradford we’ve got a large Asian community and within the community we have discrimination. Putting a light to Saima, well, she’s just a really nice Yorkshire girl. She’s just trying to win the battle of hearts and minds. I feel in life your perception of people and the reality are two different things. Especially in the times we live in now with identity, with Brexit and the far right. These types of stories are normally written in nonfiction, which I find quite depressing. Saima is never going to quit. Harry and Saima have that in common. The family story was just a story that hasn’t been explored in fiction before. It’s an attempt to break down stereotypes and clichés with the type of character Saima is. With a Muslim woman it’s normally very nuanced in the way they are viewed. I wanted to break stereotypes. Most Muslim woman I know are just cool Yorkshire women! The other thing is, Harry can be dark and edgy away from the home but whilst at home he pulls it back with Saima and his son Aaron. It creates balance in the piece rather than have the characters as too one dimensional.

And without spoilers again things are kept open at the end. There’s going to be other books?

I’m planning to do one book a year. I have the next one in my head. It’s not the end of Harry and I enjoyed introducing a few new characters which could develop.

I’ve left little cracks in the foundations which may all have a part to play. It’s for readers to say really but I think this is the most visual book that I’ve written - with one eye on future TV adaptation.

We are in development with the BBC to do Streets of Darkness which is a really long process. Streets of Darkness came out in 2016 and Harry Virdee is still the only Asian lead in a reoccurring series. This is tragic. We need to get more diverse voices but diverse voices that cross barriers. Harry Virdee crosses every single barrier. Most of the feedback I get is that he is just Harry striving to be good. Asian writers that I read, they can write very Asian books. I hate that. I want to appeal to a broad spectrum of readers because that’s the world I live in. Every day I meet people of three different colours, four different nationalities and five different religions. Harry bounces off very different people in the book – a people-centric structure is very important. People are very different but generally we all want to get along with each other and I think it’s very important to show that. Whilst showing people like Harry’s dad who is on the opposite side of the fence. With the development of the TV adaption we’re trying to get the right balance of action and reality at the moment.

Can you see Bradford noir happening as a genre in the same vein as Scottish Noir etc?

Bradford Literature Festival is running a competition sponsored by Mayfair Group Investments looking for some Northern Noir crime writers. We’ve had sold out crime events at the Festival. They’re all geared to the competition which is now open, and which is to submit 5000 words. 10 to 15 writers will be mentored and taken on an Arvon course with a possible contract with my agent at the end .

It’s always surprised me that there’s never been many Bradford crime writers in the past. The city seems ideal for it.

I like writing big bombastic thrillers with Bradford as a canvas. I always wanted something huge though in terms of the plot. Start with something huge and break it down. The most important thing for me is also to try and be ahead of the reader all the time. When the reader gets ahead of you that’s when you start to lose it as an author! Bradford needs big plots and big ideas.

City of Sinners is published by Bantam Press