A Darker Shade of Blue

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Summary

John Harvey has been described as the master of British crime and in A Darker Shade of Blue he has collected together some of his very best writing.

From the killing fields of the East Midlands to the mean streets of London, from the jazz clubs and clip joints of Soho to the barren fenlands of East Anglia, this is a world of broken families and run-down estates, revenge killings and prostitution, drugs, guns and corruption; a world of overstretched police forces and underpaid detectives, men and women who strive nonetheless for a kind of justice; a world in which everything, even friendship, has a price.

Featuring characters like Frank Elder, who tried to turn his back on police work and failed; Jack Kiley, ex-copper and one-time professional footballer, now a London-based PI; and the renowned jazz loving and much-loved Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick, John Harvey's finely-crafted vignettes perfectly encapsulate life in the badlands of modern Britain.

Reviews

These dark, gritty, crime stories set in the mean streets of modern Britain - in Soho, Sheffield, Nottingham - and peopled by gangsters, cops, drug addicts and prostitutes . . . are compelling
Independent on Sunday

About the author

John Harvey

John Harvey was born in London, where he now lives, while considering Nottingham his spiritual home. Initially a teacher of English & Drama, he has been a full-time writer for more than forty years. The first of his 12 volume Charlie Resnick series, Lonely Hearts was selected by The Times as one of the '100 Best Crime Novels of the Century' and the first Frank Elder novel, Flesh & Blood, won the CWA Silver Dagger in 2004. He was awarded the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger for sustained excellence in the crime genre in 2007, and his story, 'Fedora' won the CWA Short Story Dagger in 2014.

In addition to writing fiction, he has written and published poetry, running Slow Dancer Press for over twenty years; his New & Selected Poems, Out of Silence was published in 2014. He has adapted the work of Arnold Bennett, A. S. Byatt, Graham Greene and others for radio and television, and in 2017, his dramatisation of the final Resnick novel, Darkness, Darkness, was produced at Nottingham Playhouse. He has been awarded honorary doctorates by the universities of Hertfordshire and Nottingham.

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