Preparing for Sandwell

Since Harrogate my life has changed beyond all recognition, but one of the biggest surprises was less than half an hour after my launch, I was invited to appear at my first festival live and in person. Although I’ve done many online festivals within UK Crime Book Club and one for Crime Cymru, this will be different, as I cannot prepare in the same way as your average interviewer, as I can’t read notes.



So it’s important to have a rounded viewpoint of all of the authors on the panel. In order to do this before Nov 2nd, I must be as fully prepared as I can be by reading all of the panellists’ books. I was lucky when the organiser told me of the panel, as I’d already when all of Abir Mukherjee’s books and I’ve just finished all of Vaseem’s new series for my book on police procedurals, so I was only left with A.A Dhand to complete this excellent triumvirate.



It’s a long time since I read his first book; however, I could still remember the distinctive premise behind his detective, Harry Virdee, that of a Sikh man marrying a Muslim woman and the conflicts that this would create as a backstory. This has affected both of the first two books that I’ve read, but it became more complicated after Virdee finds his niece dead at the start of this book. How would he be able to solve this without further complicating his own life and who in the city was responsible and why?



The complex nature of the reason behind this shows how excellently aware A.A Dhand is of the city of Bradford. With both brothers on either side of the law, this story got more and more complicated with each page that went by. With a story steeped in complex crimes and the darker side of Bradford, this will be another book that will teach me something I was only aware in brief thanks to a few news stories years ago. This is what I love about crime fiction and what ties the three panellists together, as they all have an issue led approach to their writing and I’m really enjoying the chance to interview them about their process.












https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Girl-Zero-Audiobook/B06XWHP276?ref=a_library_t_c5_libItem_B06XWHP276_0&pf_rd_p=7e7340a8-8768-4798-a0ce-83f879c09110&pf_rd_r=E2E33SRZKY52RWTDEHX2&pageLoadId=zStG1xP87ujEEz3d&creativeId=14d6a1c2-a3f8-499b-900a-1ae788c317b1