I Didn’t Say That, Did I?: BRIT GRIT by Paul D. Brazill

America may well be the  official home of pulp and noir but the United Kingdom, long  perceived as the land of Dame Agatha style cozies and stuck-up, Latin quoting police detectives, also has a grubby underbelly which has produced plenty of gritty crime writing. And there is a new wave of Brit Grit writers leaving their bloodstained footprints across this septic isle, too.
The godfathers of the new  Brit Grit must be Ted Lewis, Derek Raymond and Mark Timlin with Jake Arnott, Ian Rankin and Val McDermid as part of the next wave.
But in the last few years, more and more BRIT GRIT writers have been creeping out of the woodwork, through the cracks in the pavement, out of the dark and dingy alleyways.
Scottish crime writer Tony Black, for example, is the author of four novels featuring punch drunk, booze addled  Gus Dury, an ex  journalist turned reluctant Private Investigator whose shoulder has more chips than Harry Ramsden. The books  see Gus sniff around the back streets of Edinburgh and follow the rancid trail of crime and corruption right to to the top.
They’re gruelling, intense and exciting journeys – not without moments of humour and tenderness. You may feel as if you’d like to give Gus a smack every few pages but the pit bull proves himself again and again.
Gus Dury may be in the gutter but he’s still looking at the stars, albeit through the bottom of a bottle of whisky. And it’s down to Black’s great writing that when you you finish one of his novels you feel battered and bruised  but can’t wait for the next round.
Pulp mastermind Otto Prenzler famously said that noir is about losers and not private investigators. Mr Prenzler has probably never read any Tony Black – or fellow Scot Ray Banks, then. Banks’ Cal Inness quartet is the real deal. Inness is true loser. He’s a fuck up. A lush. A mess. A man so far in denial he’s in the Suez. In each  brilliant tale he bang’s his head against as many brick walls as he can. And he feels the pain. And so do we. The quartet is as bitter and dark as an Irish coffee and leads to a shocking yet inevitable conclusion.
While we’re on about dark quartet’s, of course, we should mention  David Peace’s Red Riding Quartet, dissecting the lives affected by the Yorkshire Ripper with dense prog-rock prose.
An there’s more: There’s Alan Guthrie who gave us the best novel of 2009 with SLAMMER; Nick Quantrill ‘Broken Dreams’ which looks at a Northern English town that has had it’s fair shair of kickings but still isn’t out for the count; Bad Penny Blues is Cathi Unsworth’s  ambitious look at  the many facets of London in the late fifties and early sixies; Comic genius Charlie William’s and his nightclub bouncer hero Royston Blake help you see life in a way that Paulo Coelho never will!
There are BRIT GRIT publishers too:  Newcastle’s Byker Books publish Industrial Strength Fiction such as the Radgepacket – Tales from the Inner Cities anthologies; Brighton based Pulp Press publish short, punchy novellas with the slogan ‘Turn Off Your T.V. and discover fiction like it used to be.’
And there’s even more …
There’s Martyn Waites, Danny Hogan, Gary Dobbs, Sheila Quigley, Ian Ayris, UV Ray, Dominic Milne, Danny King,  Col Bury, Mark Billingham, Alan Griffiths (whose blog is aptly called BRIT GRIT), Julie Lewthwaite, Steve Mosby, Richard Godwin, Colin Graham, Neil White, Andy Rivers . . . and more! There’s even comic BRIT GRIT from Donna Moore and Christopher Brookmyre, BRIT GRIT thrillers from Matt Hilton and surrealist BRIT GRIT from Jason Michel!
BRIT GRIT!
IT’S NOT SHIT!
(Adapted from a piece written for the programme of the 2010 NoirCon)
BIO: Spinetingler Award nominee Paul D. Brazill was born in England and lives in Poland.His stories have appeared in a number of online and print magazines and even
The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime Fiction 2011, edited by BRIT GRIT  criminal mastermind Maxim Jakubowski.

His blog is YOU WOULD SAY THAT WOULDN’T YOU?