Save An Evening with Rob Parsons - Birmingham to your collection. Share An Evening with Rob Parsons - Birmingham with your friends. Save An Evening with Derek Forbes at Waterstones Birmingham to your collection. Share An Evening with Derek Forbes at Waterstones Birmingham with your friends. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.

Natalie Marlow - Waterstones Birmingham An Evening with Natalie Marlow - Waterstones Birmingham

Marlow, who was inspired to write Needless Alley by her great grandmother, who was one of 13 children and lived and worked on the Birmingham canals, added: “ I am thrilled to be working with Jade and the rest of the team at Baskerville. William Garrett has been my own private detective for quite some while now, and it feels momentous to send him out into the world. There are many other interesting characters in the novel; Queenie, Ronnie and Clara to name a few. They all feed into each other nicely, creating a full circle and I found them all to be interesting for different reasons.

William's life changes when he meets the beautiful Clara Morton and falls in love. Little does he know she is the wife of a client - a leading fascist with a dangerous obsession. Soon, what should have been another straightforward job turns into something far more deadly. This book takes us to those worlds - to clandestine Queer bars, to haunts of artists and sex workers, to the tenements of the poor and to the locations of seamy photoshoots, where powerful men pay to watch the models pose, to closed factories and far-right politics, to the struggles of desperate people to stay one step away from destitution. A perfect noir setting, Marlow's Birmingham is a city whose residents are still struggling with the legacy of war - William clearly suffering form what now we'd call PSTD - and, as I said, struggling to get by, but one where every new opportunity (and every willing victim) is being exploited. Save Meet Matt Lucas at Waterstones Birmingham to your collection. Share Meet Matt Lucas at Waterstones Birmingham with your friends.

Needless Alley by Natalie Marlow | Hachette UK Needless Alley by Natalie Marlow | Hachette UK

Needless Alley is a noir thriller set in 1930s Birmingham, with a private eye investigating the seedy underworld around the canals and dodgy photographic studios of England’s second city. I really enjoyed this book as it was something quite different from my usual Golden Age murder mysteries, but set in the same time period. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. The writing and scene setting in this book was absolutely brilliant. I could see the scenes so clearly I could have been watching on a screen . The setting of 1930s industrial Birmingham will evidently draw Peaky Blinders comparisons but it is not a city I see in books often so I enjoyed the fresh perspective. Ronnie is an attractive man, a little fey and living a bohemian life, like a streetwise Oscar Wilde but with a deep libertine streak. This could be down to the effects of war, but more likely his desire for money without honest toil. The fact he can rub shoulders with canal boatmen and drink in their pubs is beguiling if a little unlikely. At heart he is a damaged man with a nihilistic streak.When Private enquiry agent William Garrett, a man damaged by a dark childhood spent on Birmingham's canals, specialises in facilitating divorces for the city's male elite. With the help of his best friend -charming, out-of-work actor Ronnie Edgerton - William sets up honey traps. But photographing unsuspecting women in flagrante plagues his conscience and William heaves up his guts with remorse after every job. There were some very challenging themes, including the tragic impact of WW1 on the young men who had fought and those left behind and bereaved, the sex and drugs industry, the rise of the British fascism movement and the effects of poverty running through it all. I was impressed with the authors knowledge and research that was obvious to the reader. Needless Alley is a beautifully written novel, a very material book. Natalie Marlow dwells on the physicality of her city - the heat of the Summer, the stink of the canals, the Birmingham brass of a bullet casing, the new steel handcuffs chosen for that modelling session. And always the cigarette smoke, the drink, the noise, a cacophony that lets up only briefly when William finds... well, that would be a spoiler.